It has been 205 days since Sacred Heart had a basketball game. It was Mar. 7 when the women’s basketball team played their way into their fifth straight Northeast Conference tournament semifinals.
At that time, the sports world was still up and running. College basketball was nearing their stretch run, highlighted by the NCAA Tournament, the NBA was beginning their playoff push, and Major League Baseball was in the middle of spring training. Fast forward one week, and all of these things were taken away from everyone.
At the beginning of the suspensions of sports, I suddenly found myself with more time than I knew what to do with. Mid-March would be a time of watching college basketball around the clock while getting ready for the return of baseball. It quickly turned into “Who knows how long it will be before sports come back?”
In the early stages of the pandemic, my attitude changed from thinking it would blow over in a few weeks, to wondering if I was even going to walk across the stage next May to graduate. Many emotions swirled through my head, from anxiety, to depression, to frustration. It was a tough few months for me, who was accustomed to running around the clock covering sports.
When the news came down in the middle of the summer that no football would be played in the fall, things became even more real that my senior year, and some of the things I love about Sacred Heart, were being taken away by the pandemic. Those same emotions that arose in March were suddenly beginning to crawl their way back into my head.
Even without sports this fall, the great people within Sacred Heart sports allowed me to get my fill of college sports without any games being played.
Mark Nofri gave me time to talk about his coaching career at SHU.
Jessica Mannetti let me talk to her about how this summer was the calmest summer she’s had in 15 years.
Anthony Latina allowed me to talk to him for 45 minutes over the summer to talk about how difficult it was to recruit in the middle of a pandemic.
Even Aaron Gaberman and the athletic communications department allowed me to start an interview series for Sacred Heart student athletes.
For people who know me, they know that Sacred Heart sports has been a massive part of my college experience, sometimes to a fault. Last year especially, I dedicated a lot of my time to covering Sacred Heart basketball. I traveled to Providence, UConn, Hartford, and Quinnipiac and covered 18 games on site last year, by far more than what I covered the year before. The relationships and memories I made throughout the season is something I will never forget.
While the postseason was cut short last year, my biggest nightmare was having no college basketball my entire senior year. Luckily, I won’t have to worry about that (knock on wood).
With college basketball set to return Nov. 25, Sacred Heart sports makes its triumphant return. It will be more than eight months between Sacred Heart games, and game day cannot come soon enough, for both players and student media.
Even though we’ve been sport-less at SHU for months, this time showed me that the coaches are far more than just coaches at the university, they are amazing people and role models.
Let the countdown to college basketball begin. It’s good to have you back, old friend.
