It used to be, before the COVID-19 caused lots of cancellations, that my days were full of sport. Some days, I wrote out practice plans for the sixth and eighth grade girls travel teams I coach, strength training plans, or a workout for my girls to be held in the Quinn Center on the campus of Appalachian State University where I teach. Six days a week, I was used to meeting my daughters for a travel team practice or one of our workouts. Many nights, we’d get home after 9:00 p.m. and the girls would still have homework to complete. Days were long. There didn’t seem to be quite enough time for everything.

The travel basketball seasons of the two teams I coach were suspended indefinitely.

Every weekend for the foreseeable future was filled with a basketball tournament. Now, even though there are online courses for me to teach and homework for the girls to do via remote learning, the day’s schedule has a lot more free time in it. 

Not only are the sports we participate in cancelled, but so are the ones we are used to watching on television. I am not a passionate fan of a sports team I watch regularly on television, but I do live with two such people. My side of the family is from Indiana, and my mom and dad are Indiana Hoosier basketball fans first, the Big Ten second, and then they come up with connections such as rooting for the team that beat a Big Ten Team in the tournament or perhaps paying attention to a school such as Baylor because Scott Drew is the coach, and he is from Valparaiso, Indiana. With the loss of March Madness, my parents lose one of their favorite times of the year, and I lose the pleasure of hearing my mother shout at the television for the players on TV to rebound. 

While I’m not a big fan of sports teams, I do regularly watch games on television. I am a fan of Golden State Warriors’ Coach Steve Kerr, and the way he has helped his players organically find random double staggered screens in a motion offense I see at least in the same family of the Bob Knight motion offenses I grew up with in Indiana. During the course of this basketball season, I became interested in what Carolina Coach Roy Williams would say after the next loss, and I thought I saw ingredients of possibility that the team might get things turned around for a late winning streak. Following an 81-53 loss to Syracuse in the ACC tournament, the Carolina’s men’s basketball season ended with a sense of closure unavailable to many teams. I think of teams such as Gonzaga who will have to wonder if this year would have finally been the year or all of those high school players and coaches I know whose seasons were cancelled or put on hold after a couple of wins in the state tournament. 

At my house, life is not yet without sport. My daughters and I just completed six days in a row that included a ball handling routine, strength training, and basketball skill workouts on our pretty-narrow but still adequate backyard court.

Screenshot of Durant in Big 12 Champtionship

When we’re in our little weight room, my girls and I put on House of Highlights, watch one of the fifty or so games I have recorded, or dig into some of the content on ESPN+. Just this week we watched Kevin Durant drop 37 points and snag 10 ten rebounds during an overtime loss versus Kansas during the 2007 Big 12 Conference Championship. That’s what’s on television now. 

I wonder how long my girls and I can keep up the workouts and watch old basketball games without losing enthusiasm for the work. We can definitely make it until next November when we hope middle and high school basketball in North Carolina will resume, but what if there aren’t any sports for the 2020-2021 season? I’ve read about the possibility that new infections of the virus might decline in the summer but make a strong comeback during the fall. For now, I try not to think too far ahead. For both sports and the rest of life, there’s a lot to be said for enjoying each day while keeping in mind what could happen in the coming weeks and months. I try to have a plan for the future while focusing on today and this week. It’s a way of thinking I already tried to operate under before I ever heard of COVID=19. It’s also, by the way, how I think about death. I know death is coming, but rather than dwell on it too much, I try to use that knowledge to keep myself aware of savoring what it is I will do today.