<p>Alyssa Coleman has gone from softball coach to carpenter. Eric Moore went from coaching football and boys track to becoming the Forrest Gump of exercise bikes.</p><p>The COVID-19 pandemic stole at least something from everybody in the sports world over the past three months. But in terms of coulda-shoulda-woulda, there might not be a high school athletic department in Indiana that got hit harder than Center Grove.</p><p>Sure, Coleman had the chance to overhaul her garage, sprucing it up and creating quite an impressive leisure area — but all things being equal, she’d rather be out on a softball diamond today coaching the defending Class 4A champion Trojans at semistate.</p><p>Moore did a virtual bike ride to Destin, Florida in his driveway earlier this spring, becoming the toast of Center Grove social media — but he would have preferred to be heading to Indiana University today for a state track meet that he thinks his guys could have won.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]<p>"I think we’d have won the state," Moore said. "I think we could’ve been right there; no less than third place. We’d have had to do something wrong. Because our young distance kids could score points, our sprinters could all score points, we had three relay teams that could score, a thrower that could score, a jumper that could score.</p><p>"It hurt for the kids. It hurts me too, but especially for the kids. (Winning state) one time was enough, but being able to maybe do it again would have been really, really cool."</p><p>Center Grove also figured to be among the best in the state in just about every other spring sport. Baseball was being projected as one of the top five or so teams in the state, girls track had a pair of individual state title contenders in sprinter Kiyah Yeast and pole vaulter Taylor Jarosinski, boys golf was primed for a fourth straight top-two finish and girls tennis was set to chase its fifth consecutive semistate championship.</p><p>Athletic director Jon Zwitt had been hopeful that the Trojans would do so well that the athletic department could even turn a profit for the season — a rarity for any school in the spring. But far more important than the financial ramifications of the lost season, he says, was the void it left for the athletes, particularly the seniors.</p><p>"My first reaction, like everybody else … I just feel sorry for all those kids, whether high school, college, even professional, that didn’t get a chance to compete — but especially those seniors in high school," Zwitt said. "Because college (seniors) have that option of going that extra year, now that the NCAA’s given it to them, but high school kids don’t have that opportunity — and if they don’t go on to play at the collegiate level, this was their last chance to compete ever. So I really feel bad for them, and that kind of overshadows everything else that went on."</p><p>Fortunately for Center Grove, the 2019-20 sports year wasn’t a total loss. Far from it. In fact, for all of the expected successes that the Trojans were denied in the spring, they experienced several unexpected ones in the fall and winter.</p><p>The biggest, of course, came on the football field, where Center Grove lost All-State running back Carson Steele to injury in the preseason and then lost its first three games and four of the first five. Rather than pack it in, however, the Trojans bounced back to win seven of their next eight games before a late comeback bid in the Class 6A state final against Carmel fell just short, 20-17.</p><p>Moore said it was one of his most satisfying seasons as a coach, because most onlookers had given up on his team a month in but the team didn’t quit on itself.</p><p>"After four or five weeks, it was just, ‘Are we going to throw in the towel here, or are we going to fight back? Because I think the worst times are behind us,’" Moore recalled. "And they were, and the kids just stayed in there and had fun and got coached."</p><p>With most of their core talent returning, the Trojans are widely expected to be the state’s preseason No. 1 team and perhaps one of the best in the country if there is a 2020 season.</p><p>In volleyball, a senior-dominated outfit overcame the temporary absence of All-American setter Madison Hammill, coming back at almost full strength in the postseason and beating nemesis Providence in the regional final before falling to the nation’s top-ranked team, New Castle, in a tough semistate battle.</p><p>The boys swimming team rode a deep senior class and rising junior star Ethan Martin to its best season in quite some time. The Trojans crushed two-time state runner-up Franklin in the county meet and then tied the Grizzly Cubs for ninth at state, their first top-10 finish in 15 years.</p><p>"It was a great group of guys," coach Jim Todd said of his squad. "We’re going to miss the leadership. Actually, I just miss them because we’re not in the pool right now."</p><p>A few other winter teams overcame hardship, perhaps none more than the wrestlers — who lost defending state champion Brayden Littell to a season-ending knee injury but still put together a solid season.</p><p>"That kind of took a lot of wind out of the sails," Zwitt said of Littell’s injury, "so I felt bad for (coach Maurice Swain) at the time. But just like football, they made the best of it, made a nice run and had three kids go down to state. So that was a nice surprise, and that was a little cherry on top of what could have been a disastrous season for them."</p><p>"Disastrous" might be an appropriate word to describe how the spring athletes and coaches felt about losing their season.</p><p>"It’s a small piece of who we all are; we’re much bigger than just sports," Coleman said. "But gosh, do we have a passion for it.</p><p>"I try to remind my girls that I just enjoy watching them play, and now that it hasn’t happened, it really does suck for those seniors — it just pulls at your heart. … You don’t get to see them do their thing, and I think that’s what’s just so upsetting. I’m going to miss seeing them play."</p><p>There is, however, always a silver lining if you manage to dig deep enough — as senior softball player Lexi Fair found out. As she lamented not having a chance to chase a state championship repeat, the Southern Indiana recruit was reminded that she’s still got more games in her future.</p><p>"In the end everything happens for a reason," Fair said. "My dad was like, ‘Well, now at least you can’t get injured.’"</p>
