Basketball players are used to starting and stopping on a dime during the course of a game, but that doesn’t equip them for when that becomes the pattern in their day-to-day lives as well.
After multiple quarantines, postponements and pauses, Emma Utterback and her University of Vermont teammates finally decided they’d had enough.
On Sunday, 20 days after their last game and 10 days after team activities were paused due to what athletic director Jeff Schulman said were "multiple" positive COVID-19 cases within the program, the Catamount players voted to call it a season just six games in.
Utterback, a Center Grove graduate, said that while sitting out the rest of the winter will be difficult, the mental and emotional price they were paying to continue was just no longer worth it.
"The part that was really draining was just the unknown every day, afraid of getting that call," she said. "Because we get tested three times a week, and whether it’s a call for contact tracing from someone that you just played, or if it’s yourself or if it’s a teammate — you never know. And yeah, if a teammate doesn’t show up to practice and the coach is like, ‘Huddle up, guys,’ then you already know something’s not good.
"So the anxiety that’s come with that, it’s really reached an all-time high at this point over these last couple of weeks, and it just became too much for some people. It’s really hard."
Life hasn’t been any easier for Utterback’s former Trojan backcourt mate Ella Thompson, whose team at Bentley University in suburban Boston had its entire season end before it started when the Northeast-10 Conference opted to cancel its entire winter sports season on Dec. 15.
Even prior to the shutdown, Thompson says that the entire environment during the pandemic had been wearing on her and the other Falcons and making it tough to stay motivated.
"It’s just a time where you’re kind of anxious because you’re kind of like, ‘Are we going to have a season? Are we not?’" Thompson said. "And you’re still practicing like you’re in preseason, like you’re having a season, but you don’t know if there’s going to be one, so there’s kind of a sense of, ‘What are we doing this for?’"
Vermont got to start its season with what turned out to be its only two home games against UMass-Lowell on Dec. 19 and 20, but it didn’t last long. Following a 65-54 win over Maryland-Baltimore County in Albany, N.Y. on Jan. 4 — the team’s third victory in a row — the Catamounts had to postpone their next weekend series due to COVID-19 contact tracing.
The team continued to practice until Jan. 12, but the school put women’s basketball and women’s ice hockey on pause two days later after positive cases surfaced within both programs.
By last weekend, the Catamounts had decided that all of the ups and downs were taking too much of a toll, and the players made the decision to close the books on the 2020-21 season with heavy hearts but no regrets.
"I think it’s a mixed bag of frustration, that they put so much into this … that they sacrificed so much, and so much time with family and loved ones, and they couldn’t see this through," Vermont coach Alisa Kresge said, "but also probably a little relief that they don’t have to wake up in the unknown every day and the fear of getting sick."
"We were all just looking out for each other mentally and physically," Utterback added. "You could tell that people were struggling, and it was just rough for every single person. It’s hard to understand what athletes are going through unless you’re the athlete going through it."
The stresses extend well beyond basketball. Thompson has found it impossible to get anything resembling a true college experience this year, especially with COVID-19 restrictions generally more stringent in Massachusetts than they are in Indiana. When she moved back in during the fall, she had to quarantine in a hotel room before moving into her dorm room.
All of Bentley’s classes are being conducted online, and Thompson isn’t able to have any direct interaction with anyone beyond her teammates and roommates. Masks are required at all times outside of the dorm room — even during basketball practices.
And while the demanding schedule of a collegiate athlete wouldn’t have exactly allowed Thompson to be in the city partying all the time anyway, being contained entirely to the campus hasn’t been ideal.
"It’s just not a normal circumstance in general, because you’re not really getting that class feel," Thompson said. "You’re not interacting with other classmates, so group work is harder. … We haven’t really been able to make any new friends, stuff like that, so it’s been kind of hard."
Both Thompson and Utterback, who shared Daily Journal Player of the Year honors in 2019, got to spend some unexpected time back at home this winter; Thompson just returned to Bentley last week, and Utterback, who’s now majoring in public communications in hopes of possibly becoming a sports broadcaster, begins her spring semester on Monday.
Both will spend the coming weeks with their respective teams going through what are being termed as "postseason" workouts, even though there hasn’t really been a season to attach a prefix to.
Despite the letdowns that have come over the past 10-plus months, both are doing their best to put a positive face on the situation and use this time to lay a foundation for next season and beyond.
"I’m looking at it as an opportunity to make myself even better than I could have been this year," Thompson said, "so when I do get the chance to play, I can just use this time to separate myself."
"All of us are just hungry for next year and what we can do," agreed Utterback, whose Vermont team isn’t expected to lose a single player off of the current roster. "Our goal is to make it to the (NCAA) tournament and see how far we can go, and I think not pushing it this year could also help us further down the road."
