On March 7th, I attended a Round of 32 matchup between the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and the University of Texas-Dallas in the NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Championship. With tournament games hosted Trinity University, I reported at the games and helped conduct postgame interviews with student-athletes and coaches.
Despite the fact that I was technically working at the game, it certainly didn’t feel like a job. Getting to see such passionate parents cheer on their kids always makes me happy, especially because it reminds me of all the baseball games I watched my brothers play while growing up as the youngest of four children. It didn’t matter that this was a Division III game between two teams playing away from home; the passion and excitement was on full display. The screaming at the referees, the echoes of the ball dribbling up the court and the tears streaming down the faces of the losing players made it feel like the world’s most important game.
The sights and sounds of this game still stick with me to this day. You might be wondering why a game I worked at involving two schools that weren’t my own means so much to me. The thing is, I didn’t realize when I sat in the last row at Calgaard Gym that Saturday night that this game would be the last live sporting event I’d attend for months.
Just four days after the Crusaders of Mary Hardin-Baylor defeated the Comets, Trinity announced the closure of campus as a result of the growing COVID-19 pandemic. Along with the shift to online school came the early end to all spring sports across the nation, including the very tournament I had just covered. No one knew how long sports would remain sidelined, but here we are in July and the NBA, NHL and MLB have yet to return, and college sports receive worse news almost daily when it comes to coming back in the fall.
Major League Soccer played its first games in its carefully monitored Orlando bubble this week, and the NBA hopes to do the same at the end of the month. Meanwhile, MLB plans to still play in each team’s home ballparks with teams traveling to face regional opponents, but there will be no fans in the stands.
Part of me couldn’t be more excited that sports are coming back. As the name and existence of this blog suggests, my life revolves around sports. I’m currently the sports editor of my school’s newspaper and I’m getting a minor in Sport Management. When things are normal, I plan my days around when my teams play, and my summers especially are filled with non-stop baseball.
However, our country is experiencing a troubling time. What seemed to be a flattening curve of COVID-19 cases is suddenly spiking again everywhere, forcing states like my own in Texas to reverse course on their reopening of the economy. Many bars and restaurants and closing again, and schools opening in the fall aren’t a given anymore. I already know that my sophomore year of college will be mostly online.
This spike of coronavirus cases has reignited worries across the country, causing a huge demand for testing. While the country is better equipped to deal with the demand now than it was in March, reports come out daily that people are waiting several days to get results back, with many people waiting more than a week. My dad waited 13 days for a test that thankfully came back negative.
This backlog of testing makes me question whether professional athletes in man-made bubbles should be receiving first priority of coronavirus tests. To make the bubbles work, players and staff members need to be tested constantly, but they also need results immediately. A test is worthless for these leagues if it takes a week to get results, because if someone is positive but they play without knowing, that could set off a chain of cases that shuts down sports for good again.
Already several MLB teams have shut down their training camps due to a delay of test results, but things have gone relatively well for the MLS especially. The leagues have contracted testing labs in Florida and Utah to get the quick turnaround times they need. It’s basically testing on demand. Meanwhile, turn on the news and you’ll see endless lines of cars filled with people waiting in the summer heat to get tested in places like Arizona and Florida. Just this week in Houston, testing sites closed at noon because it was too hot, leaving thousands of people waiting. Then, once these people finally do get tested, they have to wait several days at least to know the outcome.
I would do anything to step back into Calgaard Gym right now and resume the women’s basketball tournament I was covering, and I would love nothing more than to continue my family’s baseball road trips that we’ve gone on for eight straight years. But right now, the health of this country is more important than sports.
Other countries like England and Germany have been able to safely resume sports, but that’s because those countries have actually flattened their coronavirus curve and face few issues with the virus anymore. That is simply not the case in the United States.
Sean Doolittle of the Washington Nationals said it best: “We haven’t done any of the things that other countries have done to bring sports back. Sports are like the reward of a functional society, and we’re trying to just bring it back, even though we’ve taken none of the steps to flatten the curve…”
Until the United States can guarantee its citizens safety, professional athletes shouldn’t get special treatment. Sports should only come back when it is safe — and ethical — to do so.