Greenwood boys basketball coach Joe Bradburn was already the bearer of bad news once this year.
His Woodmen were set to play in the Class 4A regional on March 14 — their first such appearance since 2002 — but less than 24 hours before the bus was to take off for Seymour, the IHSAA made the decision to postpone the tournament because of the COVID-19 pandemic, then just in its infancy.
Fast forward to the eve of a new basketball season, with coronavirus numbers now reaching new record highs nearly every day, and Bradburn is dreading the possibility of having to drop another bombshell on his players at some point this season.
“There is an extra concern; it’s something you just can’t avoid,” he said. “There’s some anxiety, I think, especially with our seniors.”
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Anxiety has already morphed into hard reality for Greenwood girls basketball senior Jenna Sawyer, who found out just hours before last Thursday’s season opener that someone who sits next to her in one of her classes tested positive. Now in quarantine, she has had to watch the Woodmen’s first two games from home, and she’ll miss at least two more this week.
It’s not the way Sawyer envisioned her final season beginning, and she has serious concerns that this current interruption won’t be the only one.
“Our senior night was supposed to be (this) Saturday, but we actually postponed it because I may not be able to play,” Sawyer said. “It’s been really stressful because I think that our season’s going to get cut short, but our coaching staff is trying to keep really positive and optimistic about it.”
COVID-19 cases in Indiana had effectively plateaued through late summer, but the combination of a number of factors — including children returning to school, more activities moving inside as the weather cooled and the overall loosening of restrictions — has sent numbers through the roof over the past month and a half. More than 25,000 new cases were reported in the state this past week, roughly quadruple the amount being reported weekly even in late September.
Johnson County was one of many reclassified by the state last week as orange on the color-coding chart, which led nearly all of the local school districts to move to a hybrid model that keeps no more than half of its middle and high school students in the building on a given day. The move will also impact attendance at sporting events — Franklin, Greenwood, Greenwood Christian and Whiteland all announced greater restrictions on who can get tickets during the winter.
In most cases, each athlete is being allotted a certain number of tickets, generally either two or four. Greenwood Christian will be only allowing immediate family (those living in the same household) of players, coaches and cheerleaders to attend home basketball games this season.
Whiteland athletic director David Edens wasn’t sure yet exactly how many supporters each athlete would be able to have in attendance at basketball games, but he expects that attendance at swimming and wrestling meets will be capped at around 100 overall.
“We’re going to try everything we can to have a kid be able to have a family member there watching the game, until we cannot do that,” he said. “It may get to where it’s one (parent allowed), and offer streams the best that we can … but we’re going to scratch and claw to be able to get parents to be able to watch their kids play. But ultimately, if it gets to a point where we can’t do that for the safety of everybody, then we won’t do fans at all if we have to. In order for kids to be able to play, if that’s a decision that we have to make, then we’ll make it. But I don’t think we’re there yet.”
Publicly, most winter coaches are putting on a brave face and trying to remain optimistic about the season, which got underway with the start of girls basketball last week. But some have privately expressed concerns about whether they’ll be able to get through their full schedules unscathed.
Overall, though, the general sentiment thus far is that the winter might end up looking a lot like the fall, with certain schools having to drop games here and there — Edinburgh already had to reschedule or cancel its first three girls basketball games — but each sport ultimately reaching the end destination and crowning its state champions.
“It’ll be one of those things — you’ll have stretches you get to play, and then you’ll not get to play,” Indian Creek boys basketball coach Drew Glentzer said. “It doesn’t take much to shut your whole team down.”
In basketball and wrestling, one positive case on a team could indeed cause a domino effect that takes out an entire team for two weeks or more. That’s easier to avoid in swimming — especially at a place like Franklin, where the larger pool space allows coach Zach DeWitt to socially distance his team during practices — but the concern still there is that even if just one individual is forced to quarantine, his or her training schedule could be interrupted.
For top-level swimmers with designs on scoring at sectional or state meets, that could be catastrophic. Missing two weeks in December would throw a carefully calibrated training plan completely off track.
For that reason, steering through this pandemic has been the biggest test of most coaches’ careers.
“One of the most difficult challenges I’ve ever been a part of; I don’t know how else to put it than that,” DeWitt said. “There’s always something new.”
For roughly eight months now, that has been the case — and it doesn’t appear as though the county, the state or the nation will be out of the woods anytime soon. Given that reality, players, coaches and administrators alike are simply doing what is within their control to slow the spread and keep themselves and their teams safe.
“I think every athlete right now is really worried about it, especially winter athletes,” Whiteland girls basketball senior Gracie McCullars said, “but we’re going to try to our best and do everything we can that’s in our power — because right now, it’s really out of our control. Just doing anything we can by wearing our masks, or just staying distanced, but we’re all hoping and praying that we get a season.”
For local ADs, the challenge has been striking a delicate balance between finding ways to generate enough revenue to keep the athletic department afloat while also ensuring student-athlete safety. The ability of most county schools to live-stream events, as they have during football season, provides an opportunity to still generate some revenue and let fans see the games without packing gyms and pools and creating super-spreader events every other night.
“(Greenwood AD Rob Irwin) has done a great job with the fall season and keeping things going, and trying to balance the attendance and things like that with what is going to allow us to continue to compete, and he’s going to do the same thing with the winter stuff as well,” Bradburn said. “If we had our druthers, we obviously would rather have a crowd, but if our guys just can compete, that’s going to be the ultimate goal at this point in time.”
That would be enough for Sawyer, who did not particularly enjoy having to watch her team’s first game from a distance.
“It didn’t even honestly feel real,” she said. “I felt like I was just watching film at my house. It didn’t even feel like a live game was going on.”
The games, though, will go on. At least for now.
