Football wasn’t the only Ohio State sports team impacted by the Big Ten’s decision to postpone fall sports.
Ohio State’s men’s and women’s soccer, field hockey, women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s cross country teams also had their fall seasons canceled when the Big Ten made the move two weeks ago to shut down fall sports, and they too were hurt by the news.
“I think that we’ve handled it pretty much like everybody in the athletics department and all the fans of Buckeye Nation,” said women’s soccer coach Lori Walker-Hock. “You go through the whole gamut of emotions from denial, probably at the beginning, that ‘Oh, c’mon, this can’t be happening,’ to sadness, to disappointment, to anger.
“As I said to the team, I sorta felt like I do when the season ends in a loss, when your season’s over. You don’t prepare for that moment, you don’t think about it and go, ‘Oh, what am I supposed to say?’ It just hurts, and you kinda go through all those emotions.”
Like Ryan Day and many of his football players, Walker-Hock, men’s soccer coach Brian Maisonneuve, field hockey coach Jarred Martin and women’s volleyball coach Jen Flynn Oldenburg all said they thought Ohio State had implemented the protocols necessary to keep their athletes safe despite the COVID-19 pandemic this fall, which increased their disappointment with the conference’s decision to postpone their seasons.
“It’s frustrating, because I think Ohio State really did a fantastic job of creating a protocol that was the gold standard, and if everybody in the conference had been able to follow that standard, I think we could have gotten to a place where we were competing safely,” Walker-Hock told Eleven Warriors.
Now, just like the football Buckeyes, those teams’ years have been flipped upside down as they cope with the reality of being unable to play this fall while adjusting their preparation to potentially play seasons in the spring.
Unlike the football team, which won’t get to participate in the College Football Playoff this year unless the ACC, Big 12 and SEC postpone their seasons to the spring, Ohio State’s other fall sports teams could still have opportunities to chase national titles, as the NCAA has postponed its fall sports championships to the spring. But like the football team, there’s still plenty of uncertainty surrounding their spring seasons and whether they will actually happen, too.
When asked what it will take for a spring season to go smoothly, Walker-Hock gave a deadpan response.
“Well, a vaccine would certainly help,” Walker-Hock said before laughing. “I don’t know. I’m just a soccer coach, I’m not a medical expert. Do we all have to just get comfortable that people are gonna catch COVID, and we don’t have control over that? I don’t know.”
Martin said he believes it will be important for everyone both at Ohio State and throughout the Big Ten to work together to develop strategies for how to make their sports work on an unconventional timeline.
“Logistically, I think we need to make sure we’re being creative,” Martin said. “It’s new for all of us, and not just Ohio State; I think anyone in the Big Ten or in the other conferences that have moved to the spring, I think the first thing is going in with a mindset that we are gonna make everything possible or we’re going to try and do everything we can to make it possible. And it’s not gonna look the same, and I think that collaboration is going to be really important.”
Ohio State field hockey coach Jarred Martin said “the objectives are still the same” for his team even though it won't play until spring. (Photo: Ohio State Dept. of Athletics)
Because their sports don’t involve as much contact as football, the soccer, field hockey and volleyball teams aren’t as concerned about the prospect of playing two seasons in one calendar year. As long as they’re smart about how they train this fall and how they train next summer, they believe playing in both the spring and the fall of 2021 will be doable.
“I feel like it is a concern, but it’s one that when we get stronger this fall, it’s gonna help our play in the spring,” Oldenburg said. “We’re adapting every day with every challenge that’s ahead of us, but I think if we’re stronger this fall, we’ll handle things well in terms of load in practice in order to compete at a high level in those matches (in the spring), and then the summer’s gonna be a little bit lighter than a normal summer.”
A bigger concern for the soccer and field hockey teams is weather, given that starting their postponed seasons in the winter or early spring could mean playing in frigid conditions.
“We’ve watched our lacrosse programs battle it, and they can play inside. We don’t have a field large enough to be able to do that here. So we are gonna be bundled up, and we’re gonna be playing. And the difference is, people that say, ‘Well, it’s cold in November when you play in the NCAAs,’ yes, but the ground is not frozen,” Walker-Hock said. “Playing on a frozen ground is a whole different scenario than the experience of cold on a Friday night in late November. So that to me is the biggest challenge. What does winter have in store, and how do we fit in the number of games that we need to? Is it gonna be conference-only? I don’t know how you’re playing in Minnesota and Wisconsin any time before April outside. So there’s a lot of challenges.”
Despite the challenges and uncertainty they have faced since March, when the Big Ten shut down team activities and all Ohio State students were sent home for the rest of the spring semester, all four coaches praised their athletes for how they have handled the situation and continued to press forward.
“I couldn’t be more proud of them and the way they’ve handled this,” Walker-Hock said. “I try and think back to when I was a college student. First of all, to be sent back to my parents’ home, as a college kid, that would be the last place I’d want to be. They were willing to do what was necessary to shrink their social circles in order to create a bubble, which again I think for college students, that was way outside their comfort zone, but they did it and they didn’t complain about it.”
Jen Flynn Oldenburg, who's in her first year as Ohio State's women's volleyball coach, believes the extra time her team will have to train together this fall will make them better for the spring. (Photo: Ohio State Dept. of Athletics)
Emily Londot, an opposite hitter for the women’s volleyball team, said that while the day they heard the decision was “really emotional,” she believes her team has done a good job regrouping and continuing to prepare for the future.
“We just have to go day by day, and we decided that we’re gonna stick together and help each other through it and just try to stay positive,” Londot said. “I feel like the first day, we definitely were struggling, but we took a day off and then we got right back into it and just took that day to ourselves to recuperate and then came in strong the next day.”
Even though none of them know when they will play their next game, Ohio State’s volleyball and soccer and field hockey players have continued to train – although they’re still figuring out exactly what their schedules will look like, they’re each effectively planning to do the training they would typically do in the spring in the fall instead – and that’s helped them keep their sanity in tough times.
“The first couple days, you could see the emotions and we had a lot of conversations with the guys, just reaching out, just to make sure that they were talking to each other, talking to the staff, and like I said, just expressing their emotions. But after that, the guys were excited to continue to train,” Maisonneuve said. “To get the whole group together, new guys, returners, on the field, it’s kind of therapeutic to be back together as a group. And when you’re on the field, you forget about everything that’s going on and you’re just focused on getting better and growing and playing the game you love.”
Brian Maisonneuve said he wants he and his players to focus on what they can control, “and then whatever the schedule looks like, we’ll be prepared for it.” (Photo: Ohio State Dept. of Athletics)
As of last week, the soccer and field hockey and volleyball coaches said they hadn’t yet had detailed conversations with the administration about potential budget cuts that could be coming to their programs. But they all said they feel supported by Gene Smith and the university, so they’re optimistic to continue to receive the resources they need to have a chance to compete at the highest level.
“I think the financial stability of our university is one of the things that I’ve been most impressed with. Over time, and in times of economic uncertainty, Ohio State University and its donor base and its alumni base have always been able to support the university in a way that we don’t have to change a lot,” said Walker-Hock, who has been Ohio State’s women’s soccer coach since 1997. “This is gonna be a different situation … There’s gonna be a lot of changes. But I also think we will recover from it. I think we will recover faster than some other places in the conference. And that also gives me hope.”
The coaches and athletes who spoke to Eleven Warriors also praised Smith for how hard he fought to try to convince Big Ten leaders to give them the chance to compete this fall.
“I think you start with your football program being as top-notch as ours is, and I feel for those guys. I was a national champion when I was in college, and they were set to be on that course,” Walker-Hock said. “And you knew that they would do everything that they could to make that season happen. At the same time, I equally felt that our Olympic sports were on the forefront. This was not just, ‘Hey, let’s take care of football.’ No, this was all of our student-athletes in the fall deserve the opportunity, and I don’t think he wanted to see the disappointment that he saw in the athletes from last spring.
“While we’re still sort of in the shadows, I did feel that we were looked after and fought for, and that makes you feel really good about the place that you’re at and what your future holds. But it’s gonna be hard. If the SEC figures out a way to play and the Big 12 and the ACC, sitting and watching is just gonna be very painful.”
