View from the Sidelines

It is the silent season of sports, this spring of 2020. But maybe we can break that silence a little bit by talking about it.

It doesn’t really seem fair, does it? What has happened to our society these past several weeks.

Several months ago, no one would have dreamed what life during a pandemic would be like but here we are living that dream, the waking, walking nightmare called COVID-19.

Like most everyone else I know, I have been hunkered down at home these past several weeks, a devout sports follower without any sports to follow. Cold turkey, just like that, and I am far from alone.

What’s more, as the long-time sports guy around here at The Ledger, trying to come to grips with the fact that you have no sports to cover, is a startling transition. No steady flow of information. No games to cover, track meets to attend, golf tournaments to go to.

But maybe I have been shortsighted about what we are up against and how we should be reacting.

Upon closer inspection, this is a game we are playing, a very important game that we are all in together. And we cannot afford to lose this game because it is not really a game at all – it is life itself and we simply have to win. We have no choice.

Since we have broken down the sound of silence on this coronavirus thing, I can go on, can’t I?

Time is like toothpaste. Once it is squeezed out into the open air you either use it right now or you lose it forever. There is no stuffing it back in the tube for reuse later, the time that ticks then tocks is gone forever. Just like that toothpaste down the drain.

It’s been a rough couple months for us all, here in COVID-19-land as the days have melted into weeks and then the weeks into months.

All without our favorite sporting diversions to distract and delight us like they usually do at this time of year. Take a few minutes to consider the time, and major sporting events, that just passed us by.

First it was March madness turned into March sadness, which graduated into April absence, leading to no-way May. Now it’s looking like June’s in ruins too if we think another month ahead.

From a sports perspective it is as if time is standing still. Fans like me are lost in the Montana wilderness.

It started with the NCAA tournament being cancelled. Then there was no NBA playoffs, no major league baseball, no Masters golf tournament, and now, no summer Olympics in Tokyo. It makes it hard to deny the feeling, of well, denial. We have been denied our injection of usual sports adrenaline, and on an Olympic year no less.

Back here in the Big Sky Country, there was no finish, no grand finale games to any of our high school basketball seasons, only the unsatisfactory dual championships trophies shared by that night’s winners after the Friday semifinals, when the finals were called off. Nobody seemed to be jumping for joy too much that night but maybe they should have; it would turn out to be the last high school sports in Montana for what has now been almost two months.

At least our prep basketball teams got to play through the first two rounds in their respective state tournaments, the big boys and girls in the college and professional ranks did not even get much of a chance for postseason play before the hammer came down on their seasons.

Although no one was happy with how the high school, college or professional hoop seasons ended, it did get me thinking of one way to put a positive spin on this season of sports that wasn’t. An idea that could make every single high school athlete, at least in this great state of Montana, in every single sport, very happy.

Or at least halfway happy, like those basketball teams that had to settle for half-championships.

I don’t know if the MHSA is listening but I am not just horsing around, let’s take this pony for a ride and see where it takes us.

If the last two teams standing in basketball were declared co-champions, why can’t we apply that same logic to the canceled spring high school sports seasons we are now painfully going through?

In my mind, every single kid that showed up to compete this spring deserves the championship in whatever sport he or she is competing in. They are after all, undefeated by anyone else, and not having had the chance to actually compete, are the de facto champions as no one has proved them otherwise.

This means all the Thompson Falls teams – the Lady Hawk softball team, the Falls boys and girls golf teams, and the Blue Hawk boys and Lady Hawk track and teams – are State B team champs (or in the case of the softball team, State B-C champs) and should be awarded their team trophies as soon as possible.

This also means that every athlete competing in a single event is also the individual State champion of his or her chosen sport, or of his or her event in track and field.

In Sanders County of course, the same honors must also be bestowed upon the athletes and teams from the fine communities of Plains, Hot Springs and Noxon, all champions using this new method of determining and crowning champions.

Come on everyone, give yourselves a slap on the back, you are all champions, survivors of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and deserve credit for that at the very least.

Although some would say these honors would represent little more than the much-scorned participation trophies many youth leagues give out to everyone just for being there, being there means a little more in the spring of 2020. It actually means everything in this year of nothing.

To all the athletes, coaches and fans who missed out on so much this year - Thanks for being there in 2020. It was the best we could do.