It goes without saying that the presence of sports in my life is sorely missed. For the mere sake that high school sports do not greatly pique my interest, I will say that the last real sporting event I was able to attend was the Northeast Conference Tournament championship game between the Saint Francis(PA) Red Flash and the Robert Morris Colonials on March 10. My brother, a student at Robert Morris, and I had completed a clean sweep for the 2019-2020 season, attending each of Robert Morris’ 15 home games in their first season at the UPMC Events Center. On that Tuesday night, a season rich with memories culminated with Robert Morris winning by a 77-67 score. All my brother told me since day one was that he wanted to see his school make it to the NCAA Tournament one time during his four years at the university. In the final seconds of that game and during the post-game celebration, I had never seen my brother full of so much emotion. His Colonials had finally done it. He was going to get to see them play in Dayton for the First Four and, perhaps, in Cleveland for the Round of 64. On that night, we counted down the seconds until Robert Morris locked up their bid in March Madness. Only 24 hours later, in the same building (which I thought I had seen for the final time this season), we counted down the seconds until another conference tournament would announce that it would be played without spectators. I’m Luke Henne, and this is my story of how the coronavirus outbreak has affected my life and the integral role of sports in my life.
People often tell me that you learn a lot more from the bad times than you do from the good ones. That mantra is proving itself to be very true right now. I, like many Americans, did not take the coronavirus seriously at first. I heard scattered news about its presence in China and thought nothing of it, so I continued my routine life. Eventually, it made its way to the United States, but I again thought nothing of it because all I heard was that it was in one nursing home in the state of Washington, only affecting elderly patients. Then, on that same March day, my whole life began to flip upside down.
While helping produce a video for the Duquesne University (where I study) Student Television network, I was being bombarded with text messages. On one hand, I was having interactions with my girlfriend, Julia. Julia is a superstar soccer player at a small school called Westminster College, about an hour from where I go to school in Pittsburgh. Two days earlier, while voluntarily substituting in for her former club soccer team, she suffered a damaging ankle injury at an invitational in Canton, Ohio. On this Tuesday, she was undergoing an X-ray to determine the severity of the injury. For that night, a plan was in place. My dad would pick up my friend (Brentaro) and myself from school, to be followed by us picking up Julia from her appointment center, to be followed by heading to Moon Township to grab something to eat before heading over to the arena for the game. That plan was fragmented when Julia’s process was delayed and she ended up having to miss dinner. She was dropped off at the arena by her mother, just minutes before tip-off. That sequence of events foreshadowed a path that, as an avid sports fan, was staring me right in the face: Everything will be okay, but chaos will also be inevitable. At the same time that I was trying to coordinate plans with Julia, my dad and brother began bitterly arguing over comments made by Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine. During the time in which this video production was occurring, DeWine had suggested that all mass gatherings in the state of Ohio be held without spectators. You may wonder why this would affect me, as I live in Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh is where my sports brain may sit, but the Cleveland metro area holds my sports heart. I have always had a fascination for the city and the endless memories I create there, whether it be at a college basketball game or an Indians game. Just the night before, I had attended a college basketball game in Kent, Ohio between the Eastern Michigan Eagles and Kent State Golden Flashes. Less than a day later, we were being told that we would not be allowed to go back to Ohio for a fair amount of time. Much to the chagrin of my brother (Brendan) and myself, we sought to defy this order. Every year since 2015, we have attended the Mid-American Conference Tournament championship game at the Quicken Loans Arena/Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland. It had become an annual tradition. Along with the trip to the Winking Lizard in nearby Independence and staying at the various Marriott hotels on Rockside Road, that second Saturday of March is OUR day. Since Governor DeWine had only made a suggestion, we still wanted to go, and we planned to go. We told ourselves that if we contracted the virus, it was no one’s responsibility but our own. Brendan and my dad bickered (via text) for the rest of the afternoon about whether we could go or not. Then, just minutes before the Robert Morris game was set to tip-off, the Mid-American Conference broke the news that they would play their conference tournament without fans. We looked at each other, stunned and in disbelief. At this point in time, we just wanted to enjoy the Robert Morris game. That tournament in Cleveland would still be interesting, but we now had no interest in it if we were not able to attend. Our mindset shifted to the NCAA Tournament, and the slim hopes we had that we would still be able to attend the event, which was to also be held in Cleveland. Robert Morris won the game and locked up their bid, but what was supposed to be a perfect day felt far from it, and the domino effect was only just beginning to take shape.
For those who do not understand the relationship my brother and I share, you need to look no further than the NCAA Tournament. We attended our first basketball game together in 2011, a Big East Conference match up between the Seton Hall Pirates and the Pittsburgh Panthers. Until that point, basketball took up no space in our lives. But that year, our dad surprised us with a trip to Cleveland for that year’s NCAA Tournament. I remember the excitement of fourth grade me, as I prepared to leave school and depart for Cleveland on a Friday afternoon in mid-March of 2011. Little did I know how much of an influence that first trip would have on me. During a break in the action at then Quicken Loans Arena, my dad and I decided to head down to the souvenir stand to pick out tee shirts for Brendan and I. We picked out two different styles. One had all of the teams in the entire tournament on it, while the other had just the teams that were playing in Cleveland on it. When we got back to the seats, my dad asked Brendan which shirt he wanted. Brendan wanted the one with all 68 teams on it, but my dad had made a mistake in the shirt sizes that he bought, so that shirt of 68 became mine. During our tradition of watching the NCAA Tournament annually, we’ve been to Cleveland, Pittsburgh (three times), Auburn Hills, Buffalo (two times), Raleigh and Columbus. You better damn well believe that during every tournament, I have purchased one of the shirts with the logos of all 68 teams on it. There’s just some type of nostalgia associated with the tournament. A souvenir cup from each of the nine tournaments we have attended line my window seal, while an overpriced program from each year are deep on a bookshelf in my room. I often get made fun of by Brendan and my dad for only wanting to attend the tournament to pick up my round of souvenirs, and while that is not true, this set of goodies holds a special place in my heart. I cannot really explain it, but there is just something about each of these mementos that help symbolize the tradition that my Dad started all the way back in 2011. In 2020, we were supposed to see Cleveland, and this was supposed to be the 10-year anniversary of the tradition’s conception. We were going to be back where it all started…where we found the roots of our love for college basketball. On March 10, I struggled to fall asleep. I was so excited from the night I had just witnessed in Moon Township, but it just felt like more bad dominoes were about to drop. Another day went by, and after I finished my Wednesday classes, I checked Twitter. The first tweet I saw was from Jon Rothstein, which announced that all public events in Ohio would be held without spectators, including the NCAA Tournament in Dayton and Cleveland. This broke my heart, and that heartbreak was followed by a heated argument between Brendan and my dad. Brendan pleaded that he would be going to another city (such as Greensboro) so that our tournament streak would not end, while my Dad emphasized to him the importance of safety and not selfishness. I went back to my dorm and watched the final seconds tick down on the Pittsburgh Panthers’ season, in a loss to North Carolina State during the ACC Tournament. Yes, I go to Duquesne University. Yes, the Pittsburgh Panthers are still and will always be my go-to college team. That is just the way it is. While in my dorm, I sat there and tried to process the news, but I just could not do it. It felt like a nightmare, and it still does to this day. A few hours later, the NCAA came out and announced that ALL games would be held without spectators. That news should have taken the air out of the balloon, but my balloon had been deflated almost 24 hours earlier. On that previous Sunday, on the way to Canton for Julia’s game, I remember texting my brother saying, “I am making my first of four trips to eastern Ohio in the next two weeks.” I was able to complete the trips to Canton and Kent, but my two adventures to Cleveland would never happen. A set of two weekends that Brendan and I look forward to for a whole calendar year had been killed. Shortly after this, conference tournaments began announcing that they would start to be played without fans. Domino after domino fell, and the inevitable became realer and realer.
I have often spoke to my close friends about my disdain for high school sports. I attended one high school football game during my tenure at Seneca Valley, and the only reason I did so was because I was selected to be a sideline reporter for WPXI, one of our local news stations. On this night, March 11, I decided to attend a PIAA basketball playoff game between the Butler Golden Tornado and Upper St. Clair Panthers at the UPMC Events Center in Moon Township. The teams, who are local to Pittsburgh, had battled in an outstanding game just two weeks earlier during the WPIAL playoffs, and it was too glossy of a match up for many in the area to pass up. Furthermore, Ethan Morton (Butler’s star player) was a senior who has committed to Purdue University to play basketball. I told myself all year that I wanted to see Morton play, and now was my chance. If I am being completely honest, I had no intentions of attending the game that night. I wanted to sit in my dorm room and enjoy college basketball (and all sports, for that matter) while I still could. However, it felt like I needed to be at that game with my brother. We did not so much need the game as much as we needed the opportunity to get our minds off of the devastating news that had come to us that day. As I sat in that arena, knowing that it would very well likely be the last sporting event I got to attend for a long period of time, I am embarrassed to say that I could not have been less interested in the game. I kept checking my phone to wait for the inevitable to burst. Conferences all across the country announced that they would be playing the remainders of their tournaments without fans, and the unreal was starting to become very real. Shortly before the game ended and Butler secured a nice comeback victory, news erupted that Rudy Gobert had tested positive for COVID-19 and that the NBA had suspended their season. At that point, my heart sunk once again. It was not because the NBA had suspended operations, but because I knew what was coming. At this point, it was only a matter of time before the NCAA called off the tournament entirely and the NHL and MLB suspended their seasons.
I woke up on Thursday morning, took a shower and looked at my phone to see what the temperature was, but I did not need my phone to tell you how a beautiful of a day it was. I put on a pair of shorts and my red Duquesne basketball tee shirt. Duquesne was scheduled to play the Fordham Rams in the Atlantic 10 Conference Tournament in Brooklyn that evening, so I proceeded as if there was still a game. My heart told me I would get to watch basketball (without fans) for at least another day, but my head told me this season (one in which I attended 50 games) was abruptly coming to an end. After my second class on Thursday, I checked my Twitter feed, littered with Rothstein tweets that read “The _____ Conference has cancelled the remainder of its conference tournament, per release.” I knew it was coming, but that did not change the fact that it did not feel real. Just hours later, the NHL and MLB suspended their seasons, while the NCAA had cancelled the remainder of their winter and spring sports. This included the NCAA Tournament. I did not even cry. I was upset, but I did not cry. What had unfolded in front of me in the 48 hours leading up to this told me all that I needed to know and all that was to come, in terms of sports. By this point, my school (along with so many others across the country) had decided that it would be transitioning to online classes for at least the next two weeks. I knew we were not coming back though. On Monday at 4 PM, I was on my way to Kent for what was supposed to be the start of an unforgettable week. By Thursday at 4 PM, I began dismantling my dorm room and preparing to head home until August. That week became unforgettable, but for all of the wrong reasons. It is a shame that all of this unfolded during the week that it did. This week was a beautiful week here in Pittsburgh. Temperatures in the high-50s to low-60s, students starting to complete their work outside again and buddies throwing football or baseball in the lawns in front of the dorm rooms. That night, I enjoyed my last meal at Hogan Dining Center and played my last game of pickup basketball at the Power Center with Brentaro. As he left my room around midnight that night, I gave him a hug. He had become my best friend during my freshman year at Duquesne. I wanted to believe I would be seeing him again in two weeks, but my brain is too smart to understand that that would not be happening.
As my parents picked me up on that Friday morning, and I headed home, I sulked a lot. However, there was still one gem left in my life, my girlfriend. For the time being, I was still able to hang out with her, and I took full advantage of that. We spent almost every day together, embracing each other and soaking in every moment we could. Now while Julia is the staple of my life, she understands the role sports play in it as well. I dragged her to plenty Pirate and Robert Morris games in our first year together, and she was devastated by the news that had befallen me. But, for my sanity’s sake, I still had her. As I write this for you, on March 27, I am no longer allowed to see her for the next 10 days (at least). Our county has been placed under a stay-at-home order, and that will prevent me from seeing her during that time frame. Anyone who knows me knows that I spend a lot of time with Julia. They also know that I spend a lot of time with sports. Julia and sports are pretty much my DNA. Believe me when I tell you that balancing the two is not always easy, but thanks to the unbelievable love and cooperation of my girlfriend, she has made the balancing process a whole lot easier than I could have ever expected. We have had our arguments about balancing this time, but much like we have realized how much we mean to each other, she nudged me during one of the many RMU games we attended and told me she finally realized how much sports meant to me. That news warmed my heart. The two aspects of my life that I loved the most in harmony with each other is a match made in heaven for this guy. Tomorrow marks exactly three weeks since she nudged me and told me that. Here we are, three weeks later, and now I cannot even interact with my girlfriend on a regular basis. Life sucks, but believe me, I understand that it could be much worse for me.
Anyone who stumbles across this memoir and tries to paint the picture of me that I am a selfish person who does not understand the real-world consequences of this is severely mistaken. I am a precautionary person who definitely understands that the decisions that were made were in excellent consultation with people who know A LOT more than I ever will, but it does not change the fact that I am heartbroken as a sports fan. I think the first time I realized how much I needed sports was almost two years ago. I always took them for granted, and knew I would be entitled to more in the near and distant future. When Andrew McCutchen was traded from the Pirates to the Giants in January of 2018, I circled the date on the calendar for when he would return to PNC Park. That date was May 11. I planned on packing my pockets with tissues and crying like I never had at a sporting event before. Like many people in this generation of Pirates fans, Andrew McCutchen is our hero. He brought us out of the dark and got us back into the postseason, something I had never seen until my 13th year on this planet. Just five days before McCutchen was set to make his return to Pittsburgh, I was dumped. A rocky relationship had ended, and I did not know how to handle myself on a day-to-day basis. Five days after the fact, in what was my first baseball game since the break-up, I did not shed one tear during McCutchen’s return. I tried to make myself cry, but I just could not do it. I had used up all of my tears in the days leading up to the game on an aspect of my life that I realized, over time, was not necessary to me. I feel awful that my emotions could not strike me during this game, but the emotions of that week overwhelmed me and would continue to do so for a long period of time. It was in this time frame that I realized how much I needed sports. People would always walk into and out of my life, but I started to understand that sports would never leave my life. That is, until the time that we are currently living in.
As I begin to wrap this memoir up, I will say that attending sporting events has gotten me into a lot of issues before. It has forced me to miss baseball and hockey games and lie about where I was at. I have switched my work schedule to possibly inconvenience others, while making life a convenience for myself. However, one event tops all of these. On June 1, 2019, just one day after my high-school graduation, Julia and a lifelong friend (Ian) were holding their graduation parties. That day, the Pirates were hosting the Milwaukee Brewers on Chris Archer bobblehead day. I had purchased these tickets in January (before I started dating Julia) and was firm to the belief that I could accommodate everyone’s interests. My plan was to attend the Pirate game from 4-7, be at Ian’s by 7:30 and stay there until 8:15, and then head to Julia’s for the rest of the night. It was on this day that God taught me I needed to prioritize balancing real-world events with sporting events. The Pirate game lasted 13 innings and did not end until 9:30. That meant I did not make it to Julia’s until almost 10:30 and had to skip my visit to Ian’s party outright. I felt awful, and that feeling was only about to escalate. When I got to Julia’s, only a handful of people were still there. My two best friends (Andrew and Logan) happened to both be there, and they saw me hug Julia from behind, only for her to give no response. She walked me inside and sat down to talk with me. I understood the mistake I had made, and she was disappointed at the fact that I had let sports come before her, not in conjunction with her or below her. If there was ever a night that I was skeptical about our relationship moving forward, it was that night. I thought that this had set her off too much that she did not want me anymore. It is terrible to think about, and I am beyond grateful to say that nearly 10 months later, we are still going strong. What I learned on that night is something that I will carry with me for the rest of my life: Sports are important, but the human part of life is something just as valuable. The memories I make at a sporting event can be second-to-none, but so is a memory in a garage eating cold nachos with your girlfriend and two best friends.
As I wrap up here, I am still left without sports. I have no idea when they are coming back. The optimist in me tells me May, but the pessimist in me tells me July at best. Yesterday was supposed to be Opening Day for my Pirates. Opening Day is hopefully coming in a few months, but the pessimists of Twitter try to tell me it is not coming at all. I do not know what to believe. I have entrusted my faith in God that he will help us, as Americans and citizens of the world, to overcome this and bounce back stronger than ever. I hope that everyone is able to stay safe from this invisible enemy, and those that do contract the virus can overcome it safely and efficiently. I pray that we all learn a lesson from this, that every day is a gift and we need to do our best to get something out of every day. Sports are what so often bond us, and when sports do return, that bond better be tighter than it has ever been. I know I will be more than willing to do my part in rebuilding that bond. I miss you sports…come back soon.
Love,
Luke
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