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View the coronavirus impact through senior NCAA athletes whose careers it ended

At the very moment Alana Gilmer spoke, she should have been playing in the first round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. This was supposed be their year – her year. After losing the last two Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament finals to Quinnipiac University, Marist College was the favorite to finally win it again and make it back to the Big Dance.

Everything was breaking right. Marist had a remarkable class of seniors, one of the strongest in the program’s history, eager to make a first NCAA tournament since 2014, when the school ended a run of 10 appearances in 11 years. They were regular season co-champions. They had a 26-4 record (18-2 in the MAAC). They were riding a 12-game winning streak, blowing out Monmouth by 24 points in the tournament quarterfinal.

And then ... it was all over. Their conference tournament. Their NCAA berth. Their senior seasons. Their college careers.

“We played our last game and we didn’t even know it,” Gilmer said of the five seniors. “We were really upset by that. We had never been [to the tournament] so that’s something we were longing for. I just wish we would have gotten that chance.”

It had all unfolded right before their eyes. The entire team was in the stands in Atlantic City, waiting to watch the next game of the tournament. Suddenly, the head of the conference scurried onto the floor. The two teams didn’t come out for their warmups. The coaching staffs got called into an emergency meeting. The game was called off. And then everything was called off. As they looked on, disbelieving, the Marist players tried to glean what they could from their phones. But the Ivy League had already gone down. They knew what was happening.

“At first, it didn’t feel real, honestly. It just felt like a dream,” Gilmer said. “It’s pretty sad. This really was our year. That’s the most upsetting part. We really were going to bring it home.”

So, instead of being at a regional tournament, she was at home in Massachusetts, spending time with her family, watching movies, running on a treadmill in the basement. Gilmer is trying to stay in playing shape while she finishes her master’s. Like recent Marist star Tori Jarosz, she hopes to launch a professional career overseas – maybe France, since she’s taken a lot of French classes. After transferring from Virginia Tech following her freshman season, Gilmer, a slashing forward, averaged 16 points per game and was named first-team All-MAAC twice.

She’d hoped an appearance at the NCAA tournament would solidify her professional prospects. Now her only platform is on her phone, talking to agents.

Marist senior Alana Gilmer (top) had her career cut short by the coronavirus pandemic, as did countless other collegiate athletes. (Marist College)
Marist senior Alana Gilmer (top) had her career cut short by the coronavirus pandemic, as did countless other collegiate athletes. (Marist College)

Meet the typical NCAA athlete

Let’s break some rules of journalism. Let me tell you some stories about my students, about a handful of college student-athletes whose senior seasons were ruined by the coronavirus.

Like most all Division I schools, Marist, where I teach, is not a sporting powerhouse. The arena holds just 3,200 people. The outdoor stadium has a capacity of 5,000. But like the bulk of those schools, it does take its sports seriously. The Rik Smits-led men’s basketball team put Marist on the map in the 1980s. Lately, the women’s basketball team has carried the flag. The football team has produced two NFL players. There’s a baseball alumnus in Major League Baseball.

But for the vast majority of Marist athletes, college is the last time they’ll play their sport competitively. And in that sense, they’re more typical of the Division 1 student-athlete experience than players at the elite programs. There are a lot of athletes at Marist – more than a tenth of the 5,000-person undergraduate student body is on a varsity team, and lots more play club sports. Their red backpacks, with their team and number stitched onto them, are ubiquitous, bobbing around the riverside campus. I see them stumbling into my classes – bleary-eyed, hair still wet, smelling of fresh deodorant – after their early morning weightlifting sessions. I see them feverishly making up school work after long road swings with their team. I see them fitting their lives and their education around their sport.

For four years, sometimes five, they plunge themselves into their team. And all along, they know with near certainty that there’s no future in it. They put themselves through it anyway.

Extra eligibility not feasible for everyone

The men’s lacrosse team couldn’t wait for the conference season to start. They’d already beaten ninth-ranked Army during their non-conference schedule, briefly earning themselves a national ranking for just the third time in program history. (Each time in exactly 19th place, curiously.) They wanted to win the MAAC again after a breakthrough season last year, and then make it past the play-in game of the 16-team NCAA tournament, where they lost to UMBC last May.

“It just like everything we had worked for was coming to fruition,” said Sam Ahlgrim, a senior defenseman. “Our goal this year was to really make something happen in the tournament. We wanted to break past that barrier. We felt really confident we would do that this year.

“And then it all got cut short.”

Head coach Keegan Wilkinson called Ahlgrim and the other captains first, asking them to try to keep the rest of the team off their phones as much as possible. Ahlgrim is the invariably cheerful and optimistic sort. But now he had to go onto the field to shoot, to kill the time and settle the nerves. And then it was time to meet.

Marist senior lacross player Sam Ahlgrim (7) was caught flat-footed by the coronavirus cancellations, like every other athlete. (Marist College)
Marist senior lacross player Sam Ahlgrim (7) was caught flat-footed by the coronavirus cancellations, like every other athlete. (Marist College)

Wilkinson broke the news of the coronavirus cancellation to his team. That for the seniors, there would be no culminating battles against conference rivals in head-to-head matchups that matured over four years. That there would be no senior night. No second crack at the NCAA tournament.

“He just felt really terrible,” Ahlgrim remembered. “He kept saying how sorry he was to the seniors. And how, although it may not feel fair right now, there was just a lot more going on in the world. That, in the grand scheme of things, although this may hurt really bad and it sucks, this is what needed to happen.”

“I was devastated,” Ahlgrim continued. “I understand at this point, but at the time it just felt so unfair. It just felt like we had been cheated.”

This is probably it for him. The NCAA has proclaimed that spring sports athletes will get a year of eligibility back, but for seniors, it’s hardly as simple as all that. They’re already taking their final classes, meaning they can’t spread out the credits over two more semesters. They’d need to do master’s degrees, and potentially find scholarships when most spots are already spoken for. It’s unclear if they can transfer that eligibility to another school.

Ahlgrim contemplated it from his home in Westport, Connecticut, where he can’t do much besides run, play video games and sleep. “If I were to come back, what would I get my master’s in? I have no idea,” he said. “Financially, it’s not really feasible for me to go back.”

Besides, he’s already accepted a job with a recruitment firm starting in August. Still, he feels lucky to have had the college lacrosse experience at all. He was a very late recruit, the last member of his class.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, though.

International experience comes to a stop

Lars Schouten was stranded.

He’s an international student from the Netherlands and a senior captain of the tennis team. He was still living in Poughkeepsie, New York, near the campus, although his housemate had gone home. He was by himself. Classes moved online for the remainder of the semester. There was no more tennis and the campus was closed.

His student visa runs out in two months. Marist has been his home for four years. He has a girlfriend here. But he, too, has a job lined up for the fall back home in the Netherlands, as an actuary. What was he to do?

Back home, Schouten was a top-10 youth player, even reaching the semifinals of the Dutch national youth championship. But he decided professional tennis wasn’t for him. It’s an expensive and draining ordeal with slim chances of making a living at it. He enlisted an athletic recruitment company that sent out his tennis resume and high school transcripts to American colleges. Marist gave him the best offer and, he felt, had the best program.

He’s glad that the tennis team was together, practicing, when their coach told them. Their spring break trip to Charleston for outdoor practice and some competitive matches had already been canceled.

“In your head, you keep thinking we can play without visitors,” Schouten said. “Even when classes go online, we can still be here as a team, practice and finish our season. So you’re very confused why it’s happening – why it’s happening to you. What did you do wrong? What could we have done? So you’re just angry and confused at first, and then more sad.”

Tennis isn’t a contact sport and they were all young, he reckoned. But he came to understand the necessity of it eventually, of course, as they all did. “It’s still very frustrating,” he said. “Especially as a senior.”

A week after his last season was cut short, Schouten got on a flight and returned to the Netherlands.

Even Lars Schouten's sport of tennis, which can operate amid minimal proximity, was not spared cancellation due to the coronavirus. (Marist College)
Even Lars Schouten's sport of tennis, which can operate amid minimal proximity, was not spared cancellation due to the coronavirus. (Marist College)

Finding peace after coronavirus cancellations

It was 7 a.m. or so. The baseball team was at their gate at LaGuardia Airport, about to board a flight to Florida for another road swing. They had three games scheduled against Florida Gulf Coast University, a few days of practice, and then a matchup with Florida Atlantic University.

Then they got a call from the college’s athletic director, telling them to return to campus. They got back at 11 a.m. and were told to come to a team meeting three hours later.

“We just had a really hard conversation about what was happening,” remembered Tyler Kapuscinski, a redshirt senior. “It was one of the more difficult conversations that I’ve ever been a part of. It hurt. It was kind of difficult knowing that I didn’t have a chance to play with the guys I’ve been working with so hard for, in some cases, the past four years. It’s a truly overwhelming, to say the least.

“I don’t think anyone realized how serious it was until we got called back from the airport.”

The baseball team, too, had hoped to get back to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2017. They felt good about their pitching staff, which was the strongest in years. Kapuscinski, a first baseman, came back for his final year of eligibility while doing a master’s. He was a studious hitter who kept a journal meticulously tracking all of his at-bats. He’d hit .366 in each of the last two seasons, leading the MAAC in 2019, and hoped another standout year might get him a look in the Major League Baseball draft. Besides, his little brother would be on the team this year.

Now, instead of playing baseball, he’s in self-quarantine – his girlfriend is a nurse at a hospital and has shown some coronavirus symptoms. He’s at a crossroads. He’s 23 and there’s really nothing left for him to study in a sixth year of college.

“I can only delay moving on for so long,” Kapuscinski said. “Because I am a fifth-year, everything else in my life is now accelerated. In my head, I had two months to kind of figure out what I was doing after school. And now I have less time considerably. Having that structure of baseball and athletics in my life has always been there to help me plan out what I’m doing. Being without it is going to take some getting used to, for sure.”

He'll finish up his master’s degree from home and figure out where he’ll go from here. But in seeing the crisis up close through his girlfriend, Kapuscinski has come to accept his lot.

“Looking back on it, it makes sense why they did it,” he said. “It still sucks that it happened. But I think all of us are kind of somewhat at peace with what they did.”

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a Yahoo Sports soccer columnist and a sports communication lecturer at Marist College. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.

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