In late December, JD Gustin, the female basketball coach at Dixie State University, a southern Utah college that was making the leap to NCAA Division I athletics, it was rumored that some of its players were afraid to continue playing during the pandemic.
At that point, most players and coaches had already contracted the coronavirus, and the team had canceled three of its first six games scheduled because of infections. But the Western Athletic Conference season was about to begin, and the coach needed to know where his team was.
Then Gustin handed the players a brief letter that he himself had typed. This reassured them that their scholarships were guaranteed, but it also asked a yes or no question that they could answer anonymously: did they want to leave the season? He asked everyone to think about it during the night and then fold the papers in half and return them.
The verdict came the next day: Eight wanted to play; six wanted to give up.
“I was shocked,” said Gustin of the division. “I was staggering.”
Immediately, he started to meet the players individually. One was struggling with online classes. Two had parents who lost their jobs. Some players have had injuries that may be related to the disease. Others have lost relatives to the virus.
Even so, Gustin thought there were many who wanted to play and he felt obliged to honor his wishes as well. For some of them, basketball can calm the feeling of isolation.
Then, on January 3, he sent a letter to the team on university letterhead, detailing how the team had voted and explaining why he thought the season could continue. He asked the players to inform him at noon the next day whether they were in or out. He closed the three-page letter, writing, “I love you all, no matter what.”
The next day, after training, one of the players who had written that she wanted to play asked to speak to him. She said she was really afraid to continue playing, said Gustin, but was not comfortable expressing it because her parents wanted her to continue and because her roommate, also a member of the team, liked to play.
That night, Gustin went to the administrators of the athletics department. “I said, ‘We can’t do that,'” he said.
A press release was made and the announcement came the following day, January 5: The Dixie State Trailblazers were canceling their season.
As the women’s national tournament progressed to the championship game on Sunday in San Antonio, and the men advanced to the final in Indianapolis on Monday night, the teams were praised for their perseverance in playing during the pandemic. Hundreds of games were postponed or canceled during the regular season; some teams have paused their seasons for weeks; and those who advanced to NCAA tournaments have been isolated in hotels to avoid contracting the virus.
But not everyone reached the finish line. Or even the starting blocks. The eight colleges in the Ivy League were among those that never started, their presidents considering sports a very big health risk. Others reached the same decision after the start of the season. Including Ivies, 27 women’s Division I and 13 men’s teams canceled their seasons earlier due to concerns about the virus, according to the NCAA
Among the women’s teams were prominent names – Duke, Virginia and Vanderbilt. Varied circumstances contributed to the cancellation decisions: Southern Methodist players had previously accused their coach, whose contract was not renewed last month, for abusive behavior; a Vanderbilt player developed a heart problem related to the virus; Cal State Northridge did not have enough players.
There seemed to be a common factor: the decision was not a simple one.
“For me, it’s been an internal battle,” Vermont coach Alisa Kresge said in an interview after her team ended the season in late January. Two of his grandparents died in nursing homes with the virus, both bidding their last goodbyes on a video call. And his players were quarantined three times, receiving food and texting roommates with advance notice of going to the bathroom. But for many of the Kresge players, who had won three consecutive games at the end of the season, basketball was an emotional and mental outlet.
“I sit on the fence every day,” she said. “Are we doing the right thing? Should we make decisions for others? There are so many layers to this. “
These conflicts were not exclusive to the teams that gave up their seasons. Mike Krzyzewski, Geno Auriemma, Rick Pitino and Tara VanDerveer, all Hall of Fame coaches, expressed doubts during the regular season about playing in the midst of the pandemic. And an NCAA survey released in February, which surveyed more than 25,000 athletes, found that mental health concerns last fall were almost twice as prevalent as in pre-pandemic surveys.
At Dixie State, concerns have lingered for months.
Gustin, in his fifth year as a coach, understood from experience that the threads that unite a team are only partly manufactured in training and games. On a normal summer, his players would work as advisers at a Dixie State youth camp during the day and play night games. There would be a team barbecue in August, a retreat for mountain huts, unauthorized use at football games and group outings for student events. Later, there would be Halloween and Christmas parties.
All of that was eliminated last year.
When players returned to campus in St. George for the fall semester, some barriers between teammates, which could have been broken down in a normal year, remained standing.
Emily Isaacson was recovering from surgery to repair broken knee ligaments that interrupted her freshman season. Isaacson, eager to please and a smart student from Perry, Utah, went into rehab over the summer. Even though she wasn’t ready to play 40 minutes per game, she was ready to start the season opener. “I was very grateful to play,” she said.
MaKayla Johnson, a Fort Worth veteran with a worldly outlook and a great personality, has come a long way from being in shape. Players intuitively know who is focused on the laser in practice, staying later to take extra photos or arriving early at the weight room, but few at Dixie State understood what the pandemic was like for Johnson.
Her church superintendent and a relative died of the virus in the early stages of the pandemic. Johnson, who has asthma, contracted the virus in June and struggled with his conditioning. His father developed Covid-19 in August and suffered a series of strokes, prompting Johnson to return home from the campus for a brief period. Her mother also contracted the virus. Johnson said he lost someone almost monthly last year.
She has experienced losses before: an older sister died of lupus when Johnson was in fourth grade. But this was different.
“It’s been a little difficult for me, but basketball has always been a tool of mourning,” said Johnson, one of the two Dixie State players who died in his relatives. “I would use this as an escape. Whenever I was dealing with something, it was not difficult for me to separate things from within the lines. “
Johnson said he voted for the continuation of the season, but fully accepted his teammates’ decision to end it.
The ability to compartmentalize – to block out crowd noise, the pressure of a big moment or drama outside the court – is often seen as a valuable tool for an athlete. Few Dixie State players do this more skillfully than Isaacson. She had to quarantine her birthday, and then she contracted the virus, with mild symptoms, right after Thanksgiving. But she had basketball.
“I wanted to play so badly,” said Isaacson. “Because of my senior year, you don’t know what it’s like until you haven’t. I love basketball. It is a part of me. “
When Duke canceled his season in December, she thought, “Oh, that would never happen to my team.”
And then it happened.
Isaacson, who cried when Gustin told the team that his season was over, was angry and frustrated at having missed another season. She was also sad that she did not know the depth of the pain that some of her companions were feeling.
“It broke my heart,” she said. “I didn’t know that teammates had a sick family and they kept it to themselves. I didn’t want anyone carrying this, thinking, ‘Can I just continue with this practice?’ It opened my eyes. I have to realize that it is bigger than basketball. “
Three months have passed since the decision to stop playing.
Everyone on the show had time to think – especially Gustin. Their teams have improved each season, from five wins to 12 to 15 and then to 18 in 2019-20, the team’s last season in Division II. He went to the WAC tournament in Las Vegas to watch the games and meet with the conference staff. He spent more time watching a movie than he can remember.
He also spent time reflecting on the decision to stop.
Another college coach told Gustin that he would have found children on the street to continue playing. Although the senior managers gave their support, there was some initial conflict between them. All of this was happening in a community where the pandemic was seen, in some sectors, as exaggerated. “New York is different from St. George,” said Gustin. “It is a very conservative white community.”
There was also another consideration: your job security.
As a result, he decided to reformulate his list.
The NCAA has allowed all athletes in a fall or winter sport to have an extra year of eligibility due to the uncertainties of a pandemic season, but only eight players from Dixie State are returning. Some are not having their bags renewed for tactical reasons – Gustin wants to play a style faster. Others were denied because he felt that players used the pandemic as an excuse for not improving their skills or physical condition. (He said that only three players, one of whom was Isaacson, had done individual voluntary exercises with coaches in January and February.) Others chose to move on; a player wants to become a firefighter.
Conversations, he said, used to be tearful.
“It’s like you’re stacking, but it’s your choice to stack if you’re me,” said Gustin. “I’m not trying to be a bad guy, but this is DI basketball. I understand that this is debatable, but we needed a fresh start. Past is past. I respect Covid, but Covid’s days are over. “
Johnson is among those who have not returned, a decision she said was hers. She is about to graduate in recreation and sports management – she is finishing an internship at a gym near campus – and wants to transfer to a college near her home in Texas for her final season.
“I’m embarking on a new journey,” she said.
When next season’s Dixie State team held their first training session on March 15, it also felt like a new start. The Pioneers will go to Costa Rica in August to play three exhibition games and spend a few days at the beach. In part, it is a reward, Gustin told the players, for staying in the past 12 months.
It is also safe. The players will get to know each other and the coaches will get to know them too. The college sports psychologist met with the team several months ago, without the coaches’ presence, and reported to Gustin: There was no confidence in this room.
“This is something,” said Gustin, “that a coach doesn’t want to hear.”