Local college athletes watch as seasons canceled due to COVID-19

Bethel College junior Emalee Overbay was off to a great start to her softball season with the Threshers before she saw her season canceled thanks to the COVID-19 virus.

Before the Kansas High School
Activities Association announced it would be canceling the spring sports season
Wednesday, colleges and their athletes were already days in to a horrible
realization.

Both the NCAA and NAIA canceled
all spring sports and their postseasons last week due to the spread of the
COVID-19 virus that has left the entire country scrambling for an ounce of
normalcy.

Louisburg High School graduates
Emalee Overbay and Isabelle Holtzen are still trying to find it.

Overbay, Holtzen and college
athletes across the country were shocked when they were informed their seasons
that they had prepared for months for, was taken away in the matter of minutes.

Although Holtzen and Overbay are considered underclassmen, and still have the opportunity to compete next season, the loss of the next two months of competition has been hard to swallow.

It was a life no one saw coming.

———-

All was going well for Holtzen,
who is a sophomore pole vaulter at the University of Northern Iowa. She competed
in the indoor season over the winter and achieved some personal bests in the
process.

Holtzen finished her indoor
campaign on top as she took third at the Missouri Valley Conference meet with clearance
of 3.63 meters (close to 12 feet). That placing earned her all-conference
honors for the first time in her career.

“Indoor season this year was
honestly a bit of a challenge for me,” Holtzen said. “Early on in the year, I
was able to PR, but then kinda fell into a slump about halfway through. It was extraordinarily
frustrating as I was dealing with a bit of an injury and wasn’t performing as
well as I wanted. Luckily, I have amazing teammates, coaches and family that
helped me figure it out. I was very excited to be able to receive
all-conference honors, especially since it ended up being my last meet of the
year.”

Northern Iowa sophomore Isabelle Holtzen had just competed her indoor track season with all-conference honors before she found out her outdoor campaign was shut down.

The thought of canceling the season hadn’t even crossed Holtzen’s mind as she found herself at practice just days later getting ready for a team meeting to talk about the upcoming outdoor season. It was there where she heard the news.

“It truly was a surreal moment, looking around at my fellow athletes and seeing the disbelief, disappointment and sadness in everyone’s eyes,” she said. “No one could believe that it was real. It was so sad to see the seniors realize that they would never get to put their uniform on and compete for UNI again.”

The same could be said for
Overbay.

She had already kicked off her
softball season for the Bethel Threshers and was off to a promising start
herself. Overbay had put up some good numbers and was recently named as the
Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference Player of the Week.

All that optimism quickly went
away when the team was informed on a Friday morning that their season was over.

“None
of it felt real, it still doesn’t,” Overbay said. “I never would have guessed
that my season would have been cut short, or soon evaporated completely. When
the news came out there other schools/colleges were shutting down, I was confused.
I guess I didn’t understand how serious the issue was. I was still very
disconnected from the problem, assuming that nothing like that would happen to
us.

“The
news flooded me with emotion as there goes the possibility of playing my junior
year.  What was I going to do with
softball, something that has been so consistent in my life, confusion as to why
all this was happening, why are people canceling our sports, and I couldn’t
help but to think what was going to happen to my seniors. I met up with the
three seniors after the announcement and we all cried together.”

To
help athletes try to get through the difficult time, the NCAA approved an extra
year of eligibility for those spring sports athletes that are affected.

As nice of an option as that was, going back for an extra
year of school to compete in a sport that doesn’t provide a full scholarship in
many cases might not makes sense for those involved.

“A lot of seniors already have jobs lined up and cannot
afford to go to school for another year,” Holtzen said. “While for some this
extra year offers some relief, with my current plan I will not be able to
utilize that year because I plan to graduate in four years.”

The NAIA did much of the same the NCAA did, but like those
athletes, it doesn’t make much sense for them to attend college for another
year when it isn’t in their plans.

“This is great for the people who didn’t have plans for the
following year,” Overbay said. “Looking at it through a seniors’ perspective,
it is hard to put one’s life on hold, to put money towards another year of
tuition when they could be finding a job, and starting a new chapter of their
lives.

“A lot of this is just so inconvenient. I’m not sure what
the girls are going to do, I’m not sure of what I myself will do. It’s all such
a confusing time. All I can do is have faith that God has a plan.”

It has been difficult adjustment for athletes all across
the country and is something no one could have planned for.

Instead, they find themselves trying to make the best of a
bad, unfortunate situation.

“My teammates and I have definitely been leaning on each
other to get through this,” Holtzen said. “Our blood, sweat and tears go into
competing and hopefully getting a PR to earn a spot on the podium. To have that
goal ripped away from us this year was heartbreaking.

“It really brought into focus to never take a minute for
granted because you never know when it will be the last time you compete. Life
is like a track meet – full of obstacles. This is just another bar to get over.”