As the bus conveying head coach Casey Finch Halford and the rest of the New Hope High School softball team pulled into the parking lot of the Gulf Shores Beach Retreat, the messages started to come in.
It was around 3 p.m. Thursday, and Finch Halford and her team had just arrived at their hotel in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where they were set to play four games on Friday and Saturday in the Pleasure Island Showdown held at the Gulf Shores Sportsplex.
But as they arrived, the team was alerted to the recent developments in the spread COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. After the NBA had suspended its season and with the NCAA set to cancel all of its remaining championships for the school year, the Lowndes County School District had suspended athletics and canceled school for the early part of next week. The Trojans weren’t even sure they’d get to play in the tournament into which they’d already put their whole weekend and plenty of money.
New Hope got to play, ultimately. Though they lost twice — their first and second defeats of the season — the Trojans ended up with a 2-2 record at the tournament, which instituted preventative measures to stop the spread of the virus. Instead of postgame handshakes or high-fives, New Hope players and their opponents waved as they lined up single file. Regardless of the weirdness, the Trojans played hard.
“The kids, every single game while we were there, they just played their hearts out because they didn’t know what would happen after this weekend,” Finch Halford said.
On Monday, when the Mississippi High School Activities Association met to determine the future of this season’s spring sports, New Hope and six other local high schools got their answers.
The MHSAA suspended all spring sports — including all practices and competition — through March 29 and until further notice. Near that date, the organization will reevaluate the decision.
“We urge our member schools and their communities to take every possible precaution to remain safe and healthy,” MHSAA Executive Director Don Hinton said in a statement. “MHSAA leadership is working diligently to adjust to this rapidly evolving situation and will share updates as soon as possible.”
While seven schools — New Hope, Columbus, Starkville, Caledonia, West Lowndes, West Point and Noxubee County — had already closed school and suspended their athletic programs for this week, the decision reinforced what Finch Halford and her fellow spring sports coaches already knew: They won’t be back on the field for at least a little while.
“‘I’m having a dream season, and it’s literally being taken from me by something so crazy,'” Finch Halford thought to herself often after New Hope, one of the top teams in Class 5A, got off to a 7-2 start.
She’s not the only one.
Starkville High baseball coach Luke Adkins had seen his Yellow Jackets (7-4) return to relevance, something that had evaded the Starkville program for a while. Region play was slated to start Tuesday, but the Jackets won’t have the chance to prove themselves in a competitive district.
“It stinks because, at least for the foreseeable future, there’s no opportunity to see how it will all play out,” Adkins said.
Adkins, who was away from his team at this week’s Battle of the Beach tournament in Biloxi after his father died, felt ‘powerless’ to save the Jackets’ season.
“I can’t call up a team meeting and say, ‘Hey, here’s the plan,'” he said.
But despite the gravity of the situation, New Hope baseball coach Lee Boyd joined Adkins, Finch Halford and Columbus High softball coach Eric Thornton in the opinion that the MHSAA made the right call by leaving things open for an eventual resumption of the season — hopefully in two weeks but possibly later.
“We’re holding onto hope that after that, we can play some baseball,” said Boyd, who said the MHSAA “absolutely” did the right thing. “But at this point, it’s just kind of up in the air, and we’re trusting our leadership made the right decision this morning.”
Boyd pointed to Sunday’s statement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which recommended calling off gatherings of 50 or more people for at least eight weeks as a sign sports may not resume anytime soon, but Finch Halford still said she was encouraged by the decision’s inherent flexibility.
“Just the fact that they are trying to come up with different ways and different dates and different venues just to make it possible if we are given the chance was a good sign for us,” she said. “Even if it does come down to it not being a possibility, I was just grateful for their choice of words. It was comforting to myself and I know to a lot of people.”
The decision has consequences for players still looking for a chance to compete at the next level. Columbus star senior C’Asia Grayer has interest from the Mississippi University for Women and Holmes Community College, but the National Junior College Athletic Association canceled its spring sports Monday, and The W’s athletic program is suspended indefinitely — the Owls are “highly unlikely” to resume competition this spring — so Grayer’s planned recruiting visits are up in the air.
“Who knows when she’ll get to do those at this point?” Thornton said.
College coaches often come out to games to scout potential recruits, but with nothing scheduled for at least the next two weeks, catching a collegiate program’s eye is all but impossible.
“You play ball, and your hopes of getting a college scholarship are there, and this kind of steps in the way of it,” Caledonia softball coach Andy Finch said.
Finch wasn’t happy about the decision, “but it’s just the life we live,” he said. “It’s like I teach my girls: Every year you’re gonna have adversity, and every game you’re gonna have adversity. This is just another adversity you’ve gotta get through and face.”
The Confederates were scheduled to play a tournament Friday, but on Thursday they received word it wasn’t going to happen. As Finch saw the news Thursday of suspensions of play by the NBA and Major League Baseball, reality set in.
“It’s kind of hard to believe it’s actually happening here in our small town, that this is affecting us,” he said.
Should the season eventually resume, Thornton said, athletes everywhere would be out of practice for a while — an equal disadvantage for every school but something he thinks his players could manage.
“They’d be able to do it,” he said. “I don’t know how good we’d be.”
Thornton has no idea if his team will be able to return to competition this season; there are just too many variables in play. But until he finds out for good, he and his fellow coaches will wait for good news they hope will come.
“I’m an optimistic person, so I’m not gonna err on the side of doubt,” Finch Halford said. “I’m just gonna be hopeful.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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