Keith Powell spent Monday afternoon in his backyard, working on removing some trees that had seen better days.
On a Monday afternoon in March, it’s not ever where the Patuxent High School activities director and the school’s longtime baseball coach would have expected to be. But on March 12, all schools in Maryland were closed from March 16 to 27 due to the coronavirus outbreak, thereby suspending all high school spring athletics.
The spring season had been set to begin games this coming Friday. Instead, practices are currently scheduled to resume after students go back to school on March 30, with a new first play date of April 6 and any games originally scheduled before then are canceled. But all is subject to change, with the spring season seemingly very much in jeopardy.
“This is just a strange time with sort of being on pause. As a baseball coach, as an athletic director it’s kind of unprecedented as far as this kind of situation,” Powell said on Monday. “I went into school today just to see if there was any kind of news I needed to know and kind of check things out. We had quite a few teachers who stopped in to pick up stuff and some students who had to get some things out of their lockers, but it was just very surreal. ... It’s a Monday and nobody’s there. It’s a very strange feeling.”
It’s a feeling shared by virtually everyone. Speaking strictly in terms of sports, the NBA, NHL and MLB all suspended their seasons. The NCAA canceled its basketball and hockey tournaments, scrubbed the spring sports’ tournaments and college conferences across the country canceled the balance of their spring schedules.
On Monday, St. Mary’s College of Maryland canceled all practices and competitions for the rest of the 2019-20 academic year, while the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball — the league the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs play in — announced that its scheduled opening day of April 30 will be delayed. Also, the National Junior College Athletic Association canceled the remainder of its 2019-20 winter and spring seasons, which included the College of Southern Maryland baseball and softball teams.
“It’s just really weird,” said Lackey athletic director John Lush, previously a longtime coach at the school who coached football, wrestling and softball. “The 15 years I was coaching I used to talk to my friends and say all the time I hated having a day of school when afterschool activities got canceled. It was kind of the thing we always joked about that we hated happening. If we got a snow day, we wanted a full snow day. You never wanted to go for a day and get out at 2:15 and just go home. Now that’s what it feels like every day. There’s no school, no sports, and really no end in sight right now.”
While an increasing number of people are unable to go to work, there just isn’t much an athletic director can even do at present.
“You can kind of go up and send a couple emails,” Lush said, “ but the only thing you really can do is look toward next year because there really isn’t a ton to plan for with regard to the spring because you don’t know what’s going to happen. You imagine that the fall is still going to go on so you try to be proactive with that, but at the same time that requires trying to do some things with companies that might not be at work right now. It’s kind of hit and miss.”
Unable to hold the typical baseball practice on Saturday, Powell came to realization.
“I was thinking the other night about being an athlete my whole life, playing college baseball, I haven’t had a Saturday off like this past Saturday, in the spring, since I don’t when,” he said. “Since I was 7 years old maybe. It was very strange to be home during this time.”
This year’s winter athletic season was nearly complete, save for the boys and girls basketball state semifinals and finals which did included the boys team from St. Charles and the girls team from Westlake. The games are still technically postponed, with the hope that they could possibly be played when schools reopen. While the plan is for spring athletes to get back to practice at the end of the month, the season might never seen a single game played.
“It’s heartbreaking for the seniors,” Powell said. “Kids I know who were playing college sports right now, I know how hard that is. The St. Charles basketball team, the Westlake girls team, it’s heartbreaking. They work and work and work to get to that point and they don’t get to finish.”
Staff writer Paul Watson contributed to this report.
Twitter: @cfhphilly
