Postseason play is right around the corner for Ohio high school basketball. Seeding meetings for the sectional tournament take place this weekend for the girls. The boys’ tournament draw is a week after.
Most Ohio teams will be eliminated long before the first West Virginia girls’ team sets foot on the court for a regular-season tip-off. For a while, even that was in doubt.
So, forgive West Virginia players, coaches, and fans who figuratively looked at West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, then to Ohio teams competing since November, then back to the governor and coughing loudly into their hands. “Ahem!”
They would be justified in asking why not us. But it’s not been all sunshine and rainbows in the Buckeye State. Ohio districts don’t have to worry about abiding by a color-coded map that dictates who can and cannot participate on a weekly basis. That part is true.
But you’d be hard pressed to find an Ohio Valley-based team, boys or girls, that hasn’t been affected by the pandemic in some fashion. Not every team has missed games because of quarantining. But they’ve likely missed games because their opponent needed to.
For coaches and athletics directors alike, it can be a nightmare.
“Every day when the phone rings, you cringe because you worry about who is calling and why,” Bridgeport athletics director and head girls basketball coach Greg Harkness admitted. “I don’t want to look at it. Does the other team have a positive case? Is someone calling me telling me they don’t feel well?
“It’s really been a day-to-day soft of thing. Even our boys’ team, which hasn’t been shut down, missed five straight games at one point because other teams had issues.”
Here’s a rundown of just three of the experiences area teams have endured, and they are far from alone.
Bridgeport Girls
The Lady Bulldogs’ ordeal with the pandemic started long before the summer hit. Bridgeport graduated nearly every once of experience off its 2020 team that finished 4-18, including leading scorer Jaren Tucker.
One starter was set to return. But that player’s favorite sport was track, and when the spring season was wiped out entirely, the young lady decided she didn’t want to chance enduring such disappointment a second time. She graduated early and joined the U.S. Coast Guard.
So long lone returning starter. What Harkness was left with was a combined one-rebound-per-,,game coming back and a whole lot of green. What he didn’t have was time — time to work with the new players during the summer in shootouts and practices.
“We never got on the court in the summer, but if you would have asked me in early or late August who my Top 8 were, I would have said four names that are not even on our team now,” Harkness said. “COVID led to them not being here in some fashion. So, we basically started from scratch.”
The Bulldogs got one week of preseason practice in and then boom. Quarantine. Harkness noted that during the preseason his team usually gets in six practices per week. So that’s 12 down before the season started.
Finally, able to retake the court, the Bulldogs got five days of practice in and boom. Quarantine again.
“That was another 14 days off, and it cost us some games and different things,” Harkness said. “We didn’t have our first game until December 17, and we started back at practice on Monday the 14th.”
The Bulldogs got two practices in before weather canceled their Wednesday practice before the season opener. With little experience and even less practice to find cohesion, it’s little wonder the result, a 59-16 loss to Bellaire, went the way it did.
Bridgeport has struggled through an 0-8 record heading into Thursday’s matchup with Frontier. Given the team’s lack of experience, this season was going to be a learning process regardless. But COVID has certainly exacerbated an already tough situation.
“The only fortunate thing is we don’t have any seniors, so they will have a chance to have a normal season next year,” Harkness said. “That’s why I told them, it’s a two-year process. If we work through this year, come back and have a good summer, we will get better and be able to look back at this season as a stepping-stone.”
Shenandoah Girls
The Zeps entered the season in a bit better position than Bridgeport. While the varsity roster is better than 50 percent freshmen, it did return top-notch senior guard Ashleigh Wheeler along with fellow returning starter, senior Mackenzie Lynch. Another senior was injured and, at best, wouldn’t be available till after the first of the year.
Sophomore Charli Wickham saw plenty of minutes as a rookie the year prior and moved into the starting rotation. The next two starters? Freshmen. The first three reserves off the bench? Also, freshmen.
So, when the start of the regular season was delayed by two weeks because a Zeps’ player contracted COVID-19, it derailed any momentum the team built during the preseason and in scrimmages.
“When you hit these quarantines, especially with a young team, you take the little things for granted like being able to make adjustments in-game because you hadn’t had the practice time to go over it,” Shenandoah coach Sami Schott explained. “It really hits you, and you think ‘wow, those two weeks we just took off really made an impact.’”
Schott didn’t say “these quarantines” by accident. Following a December 30 matchup at rival Caldwell, the Zeps returned home with a tough 45-42 loss and later learned that one of the Redskins players tested positive. A second quarantine was their parting gift.
Fortunately, the full quarantine lasted only 10 days. In working with the health department, the Zeps were able to do individual workouts on days 11 through 14 to at least get some shots up and condition.
Still, Schott’s players were a bit rusty out of the second break and fell at home to Barnesville.
Shenandoah’s record currently sits at 6-9, and that talented freshman class is again having to battle back from a prolonged absence from the court.
“I’m proud of our girls,” Schott said. “It’s been tough, physically and mentally, but I’m pleased where we’re at. Do we still have room to grow? Yes, and with three weeks left to the regular season, it’s important that we finish strong heading into the postseason.”
Union Local Boys
Back to Belmont County, the Union Local boys’ team entered the season in a bit better position. The Jets, coming off a 17-7 campaign, returned four of their top six guys included 3-point sniper Luke Merritt.
But like our previously mentioned girls’ teams, the Jets were forced to miss time. The first break came right around Thanksgiving, which shut UL down for 17 days. Tack on an additional three days for testing soon after on a cautionary basis.
The season didn’t get started until December 5, and the Jets sputtered out of the gate, falling to both Bellaire and St. Clairsville.
“We had to quarantine again over Christmas, so in all, we had about 35 days of quarantine,” UL head coach Zach Delman said. “We lost six games; all were rescheduled as we found a way to get them in. We’re crossing our fingers it doesn’t happen again.”
The Jets appear to be back on track. After losing their first two, UL reeled off wins in the next seven of eight games including Tuesday’s 48-37 margin against Buckeye Trail.
Included during that span are victories against some of the top teams in the region in Steubenville, Harrison Central, and Meadowbrook.
“We were able to rest up some, but you’d rather be in the gym, keeping the cohesion and the continuity going,” Delman said. “We had some tough games early in the season where you’re banking on having that gym time, so I was worried, but we were fortunately able to come out and get those big wins against two of the best teams in Division II.”
The main saving grace for UL is its experience. Having four of your top six back certainly helps. It also helps that all five starters are seniors.
The Jets may have missed time, but it’s hard to tell once they take the court. The team’s offense is efficient as it is diverse and able to switch on the fly depending on what the defense is giving them.
“If there’s anything good out of this, it’s that we had veterans coming back,” Delman said. “(Andrew) Martin was our sixth man last year, so four of the top six were back. That’s obviously helped in the transition.”
