Taylor Meeks
Sports Editor
The Idaho State University softball team is just one of many sport teams that had its season suspended last week due to preventative measures being enforced to decrease the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
Due to the Los Angeles, Calif. being a high-risk zone, the Idaho State softball team made the decision to withdraw from what would have been its last preseason tournament before Big Sky Conference play began. However, the events that unfolded afterwards came as the ultimate shock.
NCAA President Mark Emmert and the Board of Governors made the decision to cancel the Division I men’s and women’s 2020 basketball tournaments, as well as all remaining winter and spring NCAA championships. Following this announcement was the Big Sky Conference’s decision to not only cancel the basketball championships, which were in-progress at the time, but to suspend all intercollegiate competition for its member institutions’ teams as well.
The ISU softball team, and all other spring sports teams, had its season ripped away, leaving behind unanswered questions, a plethora of emotions and uncertainty of what to come.
“I think that the health of society needs to be first and foremost, and with that comes tough decisions,” said Head Coach Cristal Brown on the situation. “While it’s going to require sacrifices from a student-athlete perspective, a season of sport perspective, a coaching perspective and all of those things, I can’t help but support that that is what society needs right now.”
The Bengals saw leaps and bounds of improvement, above all else, during its five preseason tournaments from the beginning of February to the beginning of March. Unfortunately, the season ended on a loss against Kennesaw State in Fort Collins, Color., leaving ISU 7-14 overall for the 2020 season.
Idaho State came away from its tough preseason schedule having notched a few impressive wins in its belt, including UC Riverside (6-2), Kennesaw State the first time (13-7), Purdue (7-0) and Colorado State (4-1). According to Brown, the team had just started flowing as a unit before the unexpected cancellation came.
“Last week in Fort Collins, things really came together,” Brown said. “Our bats came around consistently the entire tournament, our defense got better to where even the mistakes we made weren’t snowballing into big innings any longer, and we were getting to a place where we were really jelling and figuring things out, and bringing all three aspects of the game together.”
Despite these tough decisions being made in regard to what is best for the health and safety of society, it didn’t lessen the blow that senior student-athletes felt as they were forced to recall what was potentially their last collegiate game played.
Though the situation is fluid and things may change in the course of a few weeks while certain things are ironed out, the NCAA council leadership agreed to provide eligibility relief for all Division I student-athletes who participated in spring sports. Division II and Division III institutions granted an additional season of eligibility to its spring sport athletes as well.
After this announcement, a sigh of relief was felt nationwide for the senior student-athletes who had their last season unexpectedly taken away from them amidst the chaos instilled by the COVID-19 disease.
“Our practice frame of mind now is completely different. It kind of goes back to an offseason practice mentality of just trying to work on things versus an in competition season type of practice,” Brown said. “We are just trying to make the most out of it and take it one step at a time because things are going to continue to change and there’s going to be a whole lot of complications that are going to need to be ironed out over the course of the next several months.”
