ASHLAND — Carter Brooks and his Ashland University teammates knew an announcement was forthcoming, but that didn’t make the news any easier to stomach.
The Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference on Wednesday announced all athletic competition would be suspended until at least Jan. 1, 2021, because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was really looking forward to this season and I’m sure a lot of other people can relate to that. It’s heartbreaking,” said Brooks, a 2018 Shelby graduate and redshirt sophomore tight end for the Eagles. “I guess it’s good to have a final decision, but it kind of feels like all the work and time we’ve put in was for nothing now.”
Athletic conferences at all divisions have been wrestling with the decision as the start of the fall sports season draws near. The Big Ten announced Tuesday it would suspend fall sports and the Pac-12 followed suit soon after.
“The guys are dejected, but they saw it coming,” said AU football and Madison product Lee Owens. “As they left the 7-on-7 Monday, they asked if we were going to play and I told them it didn’t look good.
“You can just tell they are hurt.”
The Eagles have had modified workouts in small groups for the past six weeks. Practice was to officially begin next week in preparation for a conference-only schedule which was to start in mid-September.
“They’ve been there for six weeks and the amazing thing is, as their chances to play faded more and more each week, they continued to work harder and harder,” Owens said. “It was kind of a reprieve from the crazy COVID world they are in.
“They just needed to get there and work out.”
As disappointing as Wednesday’s news was, having a resolution will allow everyone to move on, AU assistant coach and Mansfield Senior graduate Reggie Gamble said.
“They aren’t just hanging on. There’s some finality to it,” Gamble said. “Now you can plan. You can have a next step for your guys.”
Owens agreed.
“Not knowing is the hardest part,” Owens said. “We know now that we are not going to play in 2020.”
Fall sports athletes can continue to work out and practice throughout the fall.
“If we can’t give them a meaningful experience with playing a competitive schedule, then what kind of experience can we give them when they get back on campus? We have to be able to train with them,” Owens said.
“Now we can work on player development and leadership and team chemistry. There are so many opportunities that we have right now that we wouldn’t have during the course of a regular college football season.
“What we have to try to do is create as many positives out of this scenario as possible,” Owens said.
When the Eagles will again play is still to be determined. The GLIAC didn’t say when competition would resume as the health crisis continues to evolve and some conference coaches are pushing for a limited conference schedule in the spring.
“I just don’t know how much steam that is going to pick up because there won’t be any championships,” Owens said. “And if you play competitively, the kids will use the year of eligibility.
“If you just play an exhibition season without a conference championship, at that point I think the NCAA would give us an exemption without kids losing the year of eligibility,” he said.
Complicating matters further, at least for the Eagles, is the fact AU will leave the GLIAC for the Greater Midwest Athletic Conference for the 2021-22 school year. The GMAC announced earlier this week it would move football, soccer and volleyball to the spring.
No matter what is ultimately decided, it’s time for AU to turn the page, Gamble said.
“For our program to continue growing and moving forward, we need to do all the things we have done in the past,” Gamble said. “We need to recruit. That will never change. We have to bring players in.”
One of AU’s 2020 recruits, former Lucas standout Logan Niswander, looks forward to a time when things return to normal.
“This is a tough situation for all of us, especially the seniors,” Niswander said. “We all knew it was going to happen, but it is still tough when it finally does.
“There are a lot of question marks right now, but hopefully will have the answers to those questions sometime soon,” he said.
