Kish AD: Basketball season canceled, but still hopeful for other sports

Scott Kawall said informing students was heartbreaking.

But in the end, the Kishwaukee College athletic director said canceling the 2020-21 men’s and women’s basketball season was the right call to make.

“Having those Zoom calls with those young men, young ladies, coaches – it was tough,” Kawall said. “You want them to grow, you want them to excel, you want them to have that experience. During this time, mental health is important, too, so being able to pound the basketball, meet your teammates, do things with them is very concerning not to be able to do that.”

The Kougars made the announcement Tuesday. And although there won’t be any games, Kawall said that practices for the teams will go on.

He said that the teams have effectively run practices already without causing spread – they went for about five weeks between September and November. And getting on the court, even just for a practice, is important for the well-being of the students.

“Being able to have those five weeks, it helped,” Kawall said. “You could tell. There was an uptick, and they appreciated the opportunity to get back with their teammates even though they had to social distance and they were limited what they could do in practice, wearing the face mask, things like that. But there was that sense we were moving forward.”

While the practices have gone smooth, Kawall said there are just too many moving parts with trying to put on a basketball game.

It’s something the NCAA has had to deal with, even locally. The Northern Illinois men’s and women’s basketball games for Saturday were postponed, and the men are in the middle of a one-week pause of activities with not enough athletes able to play.

“You’re not only playing the team for that day, but you’re playing the team that they played, or three or four other teams they’ve played within the last seven days,” Kawall said. “Possible exposures add to it. I think we were one of the last to make that decision, and that’s a credit to our players, our coaches, our senior leadership to try to make that happen. But we just can’t make that happen. We can’t take that risk. Our students’ health and well-being, and that of their families, are the No. 1 priority.”

The NJCAA website lists 24 men’s basketball programs in Region 4, made up of teams from the Arrowhead and Skyway conferences. Only one has played a game so far – Highland Community College – and Kawall said only about five are planning to go ahead with a season.

“It wasn’t necessarily unexpected,” Kawall said. “Since March we’ve been trying to deal with COVID impacts and the safety of our student-athletes, coaches and all of their families. We’ve been trying to figure out ways to work within the protocols.”

The Kougars have had only three sports seasons so far in the 2020-21 school year. The e-sports season went off without a hitch, and that was because players could compete from home. But Kawall also said that the golf and cross country seasons went well.

That leaves him hopeful baseball, softball and soccer can go this year.

“We’ve done that fairly effectively in the fall, knock on wood, with our golf and cross country teams competing,” Kawall said. “But those are outside sports, no contact, not considered high-risk sports. Coaches, players and families did a nice job staying home, not doing crazy things outside of the home, and we were able to get those seasons in, in the fall.”