Chatt Chats: In-depth, real, and behind-the-scene stories of our incredible GoMocs student-athletes & programs, past and present. Produced by Tate Johnson, Production Director, and Corey Belonzi, Strategic Communications Assistant Director. Story told by Shane Shoemaker, GoMocs.com student writer. The Chatt Chats series earned national recognition from the College Sports Information Directors of America in 2020 as the top video/program feature across all college athletics.
 
Vol. 6 - The Day COVID-19 Sent Softball Home, Nationwide Shutdown Begins
 
On March 12th, 2020, Nate Barger was making what would become his daily morning trek to work down a foggy Lookout Mountain to his new office in McKenzie Arena. He had just taken the job as UTC's Head of Sports Medicine and Head Football Athletic Trainer. He'd been on campus maybe a week, and no less had the time to even know who his staff was yet, much less know how arduous the mountain morning fog would make his commute to work every morning.
 
"It started as a normal day for me," Barger said. 
 
It certainly wouldn't end that way.
 
The world was nearing not only a state of panic but near and total shutdown, as the coronavirus began making its uninvited presence known in the United States at an alarming rate.
 
The coronavirus wasn't on Barger's radar yet, though. "It wasn't even remotely anything that I had thought about," Barger said. "It wasn't a concern." He was still in the process of finding a new home, making preparations for his new staff that he had yet to be fully acquainted with, and monitoring the whereabouts and happenings of UTC winter and spring sports. 
 
One of those sports, UTC softball, was in the middle of their annual trip in Clearwater, Florida, playing in the Clearwater Tournament. Corey Belonzi, the Assistant Director of Strategic Communications for softball, was out shagging fly balls and catching grounders with the team earlier in the day. "We had the best practice we had all year," Belonzi said.
 
The team had just beaten Merrimack 2-1 the day before and was hoping to not only avoid the reality of what was going on in the world but also build some momentum with five games to play in the tournament, after losing the previous three.
 
Later in the day, Emma Sturdivant and some of her fellow UTC softball teammates were hanging out by the pool, taking in the warm Florida sun along with some physical therapy treatment from then UTC athletic trainer, Jen Verbiar, who was doing more than just helping her team recover from injuries. 
 
Getting tips from her chemist father, Verbiar realized the necessity of the situation with a potentially lethal virus looming and did her best Walter White impersonation by making homemade hand sanitizer in the middle of the hotel lobby the team was staying in with staff from fellow softball teams there that weekend.
 
"You had to make hand sanitizer; [Florida] was out of it," Verbiar said. "We were making hand sanitizer in the hotel lobby because the budget is limited and access to hand sanitizer was none to be found. Literally, multiple stores, any option is gone. I got rubbing alcohol from Lowes. I got aloe vera from Dollar General three blocks down. You had to kind of scrounge for supplies."
 
Verbiar, Sturdivant, and Belonzi all recalled hearing that the Ivy League schools, like Yale, who UTC had played on March 7th in the tournament, were calling their team's home due to the growing cases of the novel coronavirus. Sturdivant said she was optimistic UTC's softball team wouldn't, however.
 
"We obviously were a little more head in the clouds and thought that it wasn't going to happen to us necessarily," Sturdivant said. "We definitely started becoming a little more fearful of it, but yeah, [hearing teams being called home and places shutting down] was a weird feeling. I think we thought we were immune to getting shut down."
 
The reality of the tournament continuing was looking bleak as more teams were being called to come home left and right with the growing number of coronavirus cases in the United States causing officials across every platform to shut down schools, places of business, and, of course, collegiate sports.
 
"There was a case in [Pinellas] county we were in," Belonzi said.
 
Back in Chattanooga, Barger was in his office, distracted with a litany of tasks. His tasks, however, would soon become nearly insurmountable.
 
He received a set of papers on his desk informing him that due to health concerns related to the coronavirus, the UTC softball team was now going to be the latest team to be called home, among the cancellations of other winter and spring sports that were in the middle of their seasons at the time. 
 
"Obviously, you knew things were kind of heating up," Barger said. "You understood it was a concern, but you didn't understand the gravity of it until the papers hit my desk. So, at that point, I was in scramble mode to try and figure out where the hot spots were, where our student-athletes are [...] and figure out how to get them back and the safest way to do it and what it looked like moving forward."
 
Again, this was maybe a week into Barger's tenure at UTC. Communication was difficult enough as it was with the usual hiccups of a new job in a new city.
 
"What made it unique in my situation is that I knew nobody," Barger said. "I didn't know a soul. My internet didn't work. I just got my email the day before. I couldn't use my office phone. I didn't even know my staff. Every person that I had to talk to I had to do a Google search on them before I called them. I was still trying to get my keycard, my keys – I had to wait on people to let me into work every morning."
 
Before Barger or anyone in the athletic office could make the call, it was the 'tweet of all-time,' as Verbiar described it, where the UTC softball team found out first about its future or lack thereof. 
 
At 4:16 pm EST, the official NCAA Twitter account tweeted: "NCAA cancels remaining winter and spring championships," with a link and image detailing – at least as much as could be detailed about the situation at that point – the reasoning behind the decision for the cancellations, associating them with the uncertain safety due to the spreading of the coronavirus.
 
The tweet was vague, trivial — it said everything and nothing at the same time. 
 
"At first, there was mostly just uncertainty," Verbiar said. "The use of the word's 'championships being canceled' didn't give a lot of specifics." 
 
Belonzi described the scene as something similar to a domino effect, watching as the heartbreaking news fell to all the players and staff surrounding him, seemingly one-by-one, in the crowded hotel lobby they were staying in and also sharing with the Providence College team that week. 
 
"And then in a matter of 75, 90 seconds, you had 40 division 1 athletes, women, in a hotel lobby bawling their eyes out," Belonzi said. "It was just, like, souls absolutely evaporated out of nowhere. And nobody had any idea why."
 
The situation continued with uncertainty and confusion where questions were heavily outweighing answers. Would UTC softball play again? Would this last a week? A month? Or was a season lost forever? The student-athletes, like Sturdivant, certainly didn't know. The trainers, like Verbiar, didn't know. The coaches, like head coach Frank Reed, didn't know. But he had to tell his team something, anything if for nothing else, to keep the spirit of his team intact. 
 
"Coach Reed finally pulled us into the hotel lobby as a team to break the news to us," Sturdivant said. "But first it wasn't even that our season was canceled, it was that we had to go home. We just had to go home for the week, and we would reassess after a week of taking time off and see what would happen. It wasn't even a definitive, like, 'you guys are done, you're not playing softball anymore.' It was kind of up in the air. They left it open-ended."
 
Sturdivant and some of the seniors didn't feel quite so confident, however.
 
"I thought that that was it," Sturdivant said. "I know a lot of the girls were still really hopeful, but I think I could probably speak for a good chunk of the senior class ... it hit us pretty hard realizing, like, this is more than likely our end. [The seniors] were less hopeful than others, for sure."
 
Sturdivant was a fifth-year senior. This was her last run. Even if she had known at the time the NCAA would allow an extra year of eligibility, granting her a sixth year, she knew her body wouldn't let her with the numerous injuries she had accrued over her years of playing time. For her and a lot of the seniors on the team, that was it.
 
In an attempt to dissolve the situation somewhat, Verbiar said she was trying to reiterate to the team the motto they used at the time: "Control your controllable." 
 
"There's a lot of moving pieces around you, but you gotta focus on what's in front of you," Verbiar said. "And at that time, all you could do was ask questions, figure out what you needed to know, what you could control that day, the next day."
 
Barger and his fellow staff back in Chattanooga were doing the best they could to control the situation with what little information they had, noting that anxiety was at an all-time high because of the unprecedented circumstances, which also called for unprecedented actions. 
 
"We've never called sports home," Barger said. "No one had ever went through this before, so the fact that we were stopping life as we knew it, in its tracks … and, you know, we were calling audibles every minute and assessing the situation and then reassessing the situation, making decisions off that. There was a lot of anxiety because there was no right decision, and whatever decision you made, there was going to be follow-up questions that we didn't have the answers to."
 
Calling the UTC softball team home meant the team was going to have to take a 12-14 hour bus ride back to Chattanooga, leaving nothing but time for them to ponder about their futures.
 
"It was just non-stop tears from Florida back to Chattanooga," Verbiar said. "I wish we could have taken their phones away. Like, all they did was just stare at new information coming at them with no answers."
 
There wasn't a definitive answer in anything yet, although there seemed to be little hope in everything since normally, this was a fun trip back home for the team. They were known as a group to be the life of the party that would rarely shortchange anyone of a smile. But this trip was different, and for some, the last bus ride they'd ever have with this particular group of individuals.
 
"For some of them, that's the last memories of the sport they loved," Verbiar said.
 
A player like Sturdivant knew that all too well, and with miles ahead of her and her playing days behind her, she couldn't hold in her emotion.
 
"I can whole-heartedly say probably for the first four to five hours of that bus ride I was crying," Sturdivant said.
 
It wasn't just careers ending, it was opportunities taken. UTC softball was coming off a 2019 season where they won the Southern Conference championship. They were looking at bigger and better things ahead, like defending their conference championship and playing the Team USA Olympic softball team at Frost Stadium.
 
"No more than 24 hours before the shutdown – I think it might have even been that morning – I put out a press release that we had just sold out 2,400 tickets because Team USA's coming to town in the middle of April," Belonzi said. "And then, like that, it's gone. No fans. No travel. We gotta stay at home."
 
A year removed, and things still aren't the same because of the virus's on-going presence, plus the emotional toil and scars it left behind, with none forgetting anytime soon what it was like, how it changed them, or their careers now.
 
"I've really had a hard time to find words to put it in since that happened," Sturdivant said. It was quite easily … I don't know how to describe it any other way than, like, getting the news of a family member passing. That's almost what it felt like to me, honestly. It felt like a death, like something traumatic had happened, like my world had stopped. It was awful."
 
Barger looks at the events of that day as a time to regain a purpose that seemed lost.
 
"I think we all lost a sense of purpose because we all assumed that we were operating under an establishment that couldn't be shook," Barger said. "Like, there was nothing that could phase collegiate athletics. So, I think us having that purpose again, I think it's invigorating, and it gave us all a sense of gratitude for what we get to do every day, the job that we get to do, the interactions that we can have with our student-athletes … and I think that's really just gave us a much deeper perspective as to what our job really is and the value of it."
 
Sturdivant is finding her purpose as an assistant coach at Wagner College, using her experience from a year ago to help others. "It's been helpful for me in terms of delivering to my girls what I think is the best of advice on how to deal with COVID, because it is really hard, mentally, as an athlete also."
 
Verbiar is now the University of Pittsburgh softball athletic trainer, personally administering COVID-19 tests to her student-athletes when needed. After last year, she never thought she'd be traveling with a softball team again.
 
"Everything's different," Verbiar said. "I don't think athletic training will ever look the same. I don't think team travel will ever look the same. I think the communication, especially between sports medicine and coaching staffs has wildly improved. COVID has just highlighted that anything can happen – you have to adjust and react."
 
The events of March 12th, 2020, will be a day that anyone involved in collegiate sports will never forget. They'll remember it as the day sports were called home. And as Barger said, "There's not a college student-athlete out there who would rather be home than be competing in the sport they love."

SERIES ARCHIVES – SEASON 2
Vol. 6 - The Day Softball Was Called Home, One Year Later
Vol. 5 - Regina Kirk Impacting Lives Through a Triumphant Journey
 
SERIES ARCHIVES – SEASON 1
Vol. 4 - Holiday Spirit Shines Bright
Vol. 3 - Strength Through Adversity, the NaKeia Burks Story - *#1 in Nation (CoSIDA - 2020)
Vol. 2 - Together is Better, Siblings Find New Home in Chattanooga
Vol. 1 - Mission First, Family Always