At approximately 4:00 pm on Thursday, March 12, the NCAA announced that it would be cancelling its annual March Madness tournaments for both the men and women. This was not too surprising considering the NBA had announced the postponement of it's own season the night before. The surprising part of the announcement was that the NCAA had also decided to cancel all spring championships as well. We can go back and forth forever about whether this was the right decision or if it's an over-reaction. We're not here to talk about that. The decision has been made. The 2019-2020 NCAA athletics season is over, across all divisions.
We're here to discuss the immediate aftermath from that.
As an athletic trainer, COVID-19 (coronavirus) has been on my radar for a couple of months now. You are always hyper aware of how easily illness can spread amongst athletic teams. This is for a few reasons, mostly related to how much time they spend in close proximity to each other. I've seen it happen many times before. I had an instance last year where one of our athletic teams had a game cancelled because the opposing team had so many players sick with the flu, they could not field a team.
But this? This I did not expect as a possibility.
There are a few things that immediately come to mind when you find out that entire athletic seasons are being cancelled. The scariest one of them being: how am I going to work? I'm a collegiate athletic trainer. I work with college athletes to provide injury prevention, emergency care, injury evaluation, and therapeutic intervention. How can I do that with no athletes? I have never worried about my job security before. Have you ever imagined a world without any athletics? But that's exactly what's happening. Professional leagues, college, high school, even the biggest sporting event in the world, the Olympics, have been impacted.
Now, most ATs in the professional and NCAA Division 1 setting are probably okay. But some athletic trainers who work at smaller, low level colleges and high schools are probably very nervous right now. For example, many athletic trainers are not hired by the school themselves but by hospitals or orthopedic clinics. Sometimes on an hourly basis, not salary. So, if you are an hourly AT with no athletes to treat, how do you get hours? The answer is very much dependent on your specific situation and employer. In my case, my employer is allowing me to work on administrative tasks from home. If there are not enough tasks to fulfill 40 hours a week, I can work hours in the clinic. But that would be dependent on need, so it's no guarantee. I am extremely worried about my income for the next few months.
At the end of the day, I'm following the recommendations from the CDC by staying at home besides getting essentials and walking my dogs. All we can do is try to keep optimism high and anxiety low. And so my journey of a world without sports begins.
