North Carolina’s high school basketball state championships could still be played
Three weeks ago, Vance High School’s girls basketball team beat rival Mallard Creek to advance to the N.C. 4A state championship game.
There’s no bigger game, or stage, for a high school athlete than the state finals. But since that semifinal game, COVID-19 has dominated the headlines and brought the U.S. economy and sports leagues to a near complete halt. And for Vance and four other area high school basketball teams, their state championship dreams have put on hold, too.
The state finals, scheduled for March 14, were postponed. With North Carolina public schools closed until at least May 18, the chances of the championship games ever being played seem to get slimmer by the day.
“I still want to play,” Vance coach Donnell Rhyne said. “I want to play for the kids. Being a co-champion is good, but I would rather the kids get the feeling of being a state champion outright. If not, there will always be questions about who would’ve won.”
Rhyne’s optimism diminishes daily as he looks at the grim nationwide statistics of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, where in North Carolina alone there were more than 1,600 confirmed cases as of 4 p.m. Wednesday — 444 in Mecklenburg County, with almost four out of every 10,000 people infected.
N.C. High School Athletic Association commissioner Que Tucker is holding out some hope. She told the Observer on Wednesday that holding the basketball state championships in May or June — if schools were to reopen — is being considered. She said she would want to give coaches time to practice, and that she planned to survey the 16 qualifying teams to determine whether players and coaches would want to play at that point.
“It won’t be top down,” she said. “The NCHSAA will not sit in our homes and make a decision.”
Five Charlotte-area teams qualified for the eight N.C. boys and girls state championship games: Vance (4A girls), North Mecklenburg (4A boys), Freedom (3A boys), Shelby (2A boys) and Newton-Conover (2A girls).
Tucker said she has never experienced anything like the effects of COVID-19 in her 45 years working in education.
“The hardest day of my career was March 12, when I announced, based on the approval of our Board of Directors, that our basketball championships were postponed and that we were suspending all athletic activity,” she said. “I had two conference calls with 16 coaches and administrators to tell them we were postponing state finals. That was tough.”
Spring sports in North Carolina, such as baseball, softball and track and field, were just beginning, when Tucker announced her decision. Seven states nationwide — Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Virginia — have canceled spring sports altogether, according to the National Federation of High Schools.
Tucker is not ready to make that call.
“The easiest thing in the world would be to simply say the championship season in basketball is over,” she said, “and then just simply say we have an East champion and a West champion. However, being a former basketball coach, and knowing how important bringing closure to your season is for everyone, especially seniors, we made the decision that we want to continue, as they say, to keep hope alive. But we understand we’re at the mercy of the virus.”
Tucker added that if school resumes, that might allow spring sports to play a shortened season that could conclude with no playoffs, a reformatted playoff system or just simply with conference tournament championships.
“Coming out of this period we’re in,” she said, “to get into a situation where we start eliminating teams almost seems a little harsh. Not saying it won’t happen, but I want our young people to play.”
Asked how long she could extend the season, Tucker said: “It could go as deep as we want it to go.”
But Rhyne and Shelby’s Aubrey Hollifield both worry that extending the basketball much into June could affect seniors who would need to leave for their college teams. Rhyne said he would not want to play unless both participating schools had full rosters.
Hollifield said he’s just worried about being off for so long, saying his 13-man roster, which had 10 football players on it, was peaking. Those Golden Lions have been sitting at home since and cooling off.
“I have mixed feelings about it,” Hollifield said. “I wanted to play, but if we don’t get back until May and they give us two weeks, we’re playing (in early June). I think after two months off, and you can’t really get into gyms now, it’s going to be tough. This is beyond anything I’ve ever been a part of.”
Hollifield said he would not be opposed to having co-state champions named instead of just Eastern and Western regional champions. He said that distinction could make a difference.
“Whatever (the NCHSAA does),” he said, “I’ll be fine with it, but I don’t think it’ll be as good for Shelby High School or Shelby basketball to pick up in three months and play again.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 4:22 PM.
