The Lost Season: Pandemic robbed high school athletes of seasons, lifelong memories
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The Lost Season
A subscriber-exclusive, four-chapter series that looks back at the effects of the pandemic on the high school sports scene in the South Sound
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The Lost Season: Washington’s best high school football class won’t finish their careers together
The Lost Season: Coveted state records were poised to fall. Pandemic will prevent some from being broken
The Lost Season: Class of 2021 athletes struggle for exposure as recruiting offers dry up
The Lost Season: Pandemic robbed high school athletes of seasons, lifelong memories
This is the final chapter of ‘The Lost Season,’ a subscriber-exclusive, four-chapter series that looks back at the effects of the pandemic on the high school sports scene in the South Sound.
Judah Graham couldn’t believe what he was hearing in the dugout, one inning away from throwing a no-hitter for Fife High School in the Class 2A state tournament semifinal baseball game against Sehome in May of 2019. It was nearly two years ago, his junior year of high school. A teammate approached him and started talking about the no-hitter.
“It was probably the worst idea someone has ever had,” Graham said, laughing.
In baseball, of course, superstition is king. Not talking about a no-hitter in the dugout during the course of the game — especially with the pitcher — is one of the sport’s most revered unwritten rules. The pressure of throwing a no-hitter is always enormous. But this was the state tournament. A win would send Fife to the state championship game, which the program had never reached before.
Undeterred, Graham went out for the seventh and final inning, with his team hanging on to a 2-0 lead.
“I was really nervous,” he said. “I went out there, looked down and could see my arm shaking. The adrenaline was pumping.”
One out. Two outs. Then, a weak grounder right to Graham, which he fired over to first base for the final out. He remembers the jubilation of the moment. His teammates, sprinting toward him. What he remembers most vividly is the image of his dad, an assistant coach on the team, running toward him, smiling, arms wide open.
That was the last time Graham ever pitched in a Fife High School uniform.
The coronavirus pandemic wiped away spring sports in 2020, taking away seasons for baseball players, softball teams, boys soccer teams, track teams and more. And in the 2020-21 school year, it wiped away state championships across all sports. Years from now, when people look back at the record books, they’ll see a gap.
There have been gaps in sports record books before in the U.S., most notably from 1941-45, when the U.S. was involved with World War II and young men were sent to fight the Axis Powers in Europe and the Pacific Theater. This battle, though, is being waged against a faceless adversary, a deadly virus that has killed nearly half a million people in the United States and over 2 million people worldwide.
Fife was set to return 10 seniors from that state championship team, giving coach Shane Nixon — who also serves as the school’s athletic director — perhaps his most talented team ever.
“There’s no guarantee we would have made it back to the state championship game, but I would have liked to see what that group of seniors could have done in that moment.”
It’s a senior group that included two first-team selections to The News Tribune’s 2019 All-Area baseball team. Graham posted an 8-1 record for the Trojans in his junior year, with a 0.78 earned run average in 44.2 innings with 68 strikeouts. Outfielder Brian Ours hit .433 with two home runs, two triples, five doubles and 24 RBI for the Trojans.
But it wasn’t just the season that was taken away. Every year since 2013, Nixon and the baseball program raise money to take the team to southern California during spring break. They play a few baseball games against California schools, go to the Universal Studios theme park, see the Rose Bowl and other sights along the way. Nixon was set to take around 30 kids on the trip last spring.
“My whole goal as a coach, I want to put our kids in the best position to be competitive, but I want them to leave with having a great experience at Fife High School,” Nixon said.
The trip was cancelled. The spring baseball season was cancelled. That’s the part that stings the most for spring sports coaches and players: There was never any real sense of closure. No games, no senior night, no league champion, no district tournament, no state tournament. No laughing and joking at practice, no team dinners, no team banquet at the end of the season. Everything the players had worked toward over the years was finished, just like that.
“There was a lot of grief that went along with it, honestly,” Nixon said, fighting back tears, nearly a year after the 2020 spring season was cancelled. “It still hurts. You build relationships with kids and families. … It was a tough year. It’s been a tough year.
“There wasn’t a shared grieving process that you try to get through for a lot of these kids, families, the coaches. I’m not angry or hold resentment that we didn’t get to try for a state championship. But there’s still a lot of grief that we didn’t get to end their senior year the way we always end senior years. Didn’t have a senior night, those matchups against teams and coaches I love facing. We didn’t get those opportunities. That’s the most frustrating part.”
Graham, now playing baseball at Skagit Valley Community College, remembers the day Nixon told the team it was shutting the season down, and might not be able to return. His coach, normally happy and carefree, looked despondent.
“I knew something wasn’t right,” Graham said. “He said, ‘Guys, I don’t know what to tell you, but we’re not going to San Diego and baseball is being shut down. Seeing Nixon cry made me cry. He’s not a very emotional guy that shows it very often. Seeing him do that, I just burst into tears.
“Everything we’ve been working toward since we started playing together in middle school, it’s always been something we wanted to get. I always wanted a ring. We wanted that experience. We never even got the opportunity. That was something I had a hard time handling for a long time.”
IT’S BEEN HARD FOR THE WIAA, TOO
Mick Hoffman, the executive director of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, has taken plenty of flak over the past year from angry parents who don’t understand why he won’t let their kids play.
That anger was, and still is, misguided. The WIAA has to abide by guidelines set by Governor Inslee’s office and the Washington State Department of Health. So Hoffman has tried not to take it personally when he’s been under attack from parents and fans.
“It’s just part of what we do,” Hoffman said. “We don’t do a good enough job educating the public on it. They assume it’s me, my staff and our board. It hurts when people make it really personal, but that’s just part of the job. You can’t let that deter it. You have to keep focused on kids and what’s best for them and get there the right way.”
Since the beginning, the WIAA has been working to find ways to get kids safely back onto fields and courts. When they had to make the decision to shut down spring sports in 2020, it was a hard time.
“It was awful,” Hoffman said. “It still hurts your heart. The people who work in our office, they come to work here because they love to work with athletics and activities. They’re helping to create those lifelong memories. To have that wiped out, knowing how that would impact our students, and then the personal toll it took on each staff member — it’s horrific. From a work perspective, it was terrible, knowing what was being taken away from kids.”
Hoffman gets it. He understands how difficult the decision-making process has been for the state’s leaders during the pandemic. Of all the things affected by the pandemic, high school sports weren’t the highest priority, initially. But at times, he’s felt frustrated by the lack of communication from state leadership and the WIAA.
When the state released new guidelines and metrics on Jan. 4, which included an updated framework for education-based athletics to resume, Hoffman said the WIAA was never consulted prior to the guidelines being released. That left him and his staff scrambling in the hours afterward, trying to make sense of the new guidelines and how WIAA leadership could provide opportunities for students to return to action.
“Not having the ability to set guidelines and rules has been frustrating,” Hoffman said. “I’m not a scientist. I’m not a medical professional. But not having any input in that and just having that happen to you and then you try to make sense of it. … It was frustrating to have no control, to not even have the information to prepare for what might be coming.”
Hoffman said communication from state leadership has improved since then.
Among high school sports circles, there’s a sense that high school sports and the benefits they provide have been taken for granted in the past. Hoffman has been concerned about the toll isolation, remote learning and lack of activities has taken on the mental and emotional health of high school students.
“There are studies coming out now, that this has significantly impacted anxiety, depression, social-emotional well being,” Hoffman said. “A lot of people think athletics, well, it’s just fun and games. But it provides an opportunity for students to interact with peers, with healthy adults. You learn to deal with success and failure publicly. You get to practice it before it’s your career.”
Coaches and athletic directors have also expressed concerns about the academic standing of high school student-athletes, without sports to motivate them.
“You can tell, kids that have been borderline grade-wise, but then they push through it and get the grades,” Nixon said. “Not always the best grades, but not the worst. They had that coach on them telling them, ‘If you don’t get this grade up, you’re not going to be able to play in this game.’ There’s certain external motivation when it comes to stuff like that. They haven’t had that motivation.”
Nixon said the number of F’s students are receiving on their report cards is up, at least at Fife High School.
“It’s way more than we would normally see, as far as a percentage,” he said. “We really did a push with getting these kids back on track. We knew it was coming. I think that’s a nationwide trend. Virtual learning is a decent in-between until we can get kids back to school, but it’s not what it’s cracked up to be. It’s just like a kid who doesn’t fit the traditional high school model. A virtual program doesn’t fit 100 percent of the kids.”
Focusing on the benefits high school sports provide to the development of kids will be a focus for the WIAA going forward, Hoffman said.
“We’re going to be as intentional as we can to reset that focus,” he said. “We’re education-based activities. That’s different from a club. We’re definitely academically based. There’s so much focus on winning state championships, transfers, recruiting. We want to celebrate excellence, encourage kids to get (athletic) scholarships. But 95 percent of our kids aren’t going to do that.
“So what can we do for them to help them become our community leaders? We live in a society where we can lead to positive outcomes. Because we serve every student that’s interested, in the state, we have the ability to do that. (The pandemic) has helped us reset our focus.”
Hoffman is fond of telling people that the WIAA is in the memory-making business. Seeing how many potential memory-making opportunities have been stripped away from high school students over the past year has been tough for him.
“There are friendships that could have developed that would last a lifetime,” he said. “For a lot of people, some of their best friends, they made in high school. Maybe they’re on a JV team together, and they become friends, and they’re in each other’s weddings.”
ROGERS’ DYNAMITE MIDDLE INFIELD SOFTBALL DUO MISSED SENIORS YEARS
Count Raigan Barrett and Rachel Wicker among those who are likely to be in each other’s weddings some day. The two are best friends and on the softball diamond, were as good a middle infield combo as any in the state. They were both first-team selections to The News Tribune’s 2019 All-Area softball team as juniors.
Like Fife baseball’s loaded senior class, they missed out on their senior seasons. Barrett, who batted .595 her junior year at shortstop, with 11 doubles, three triples, three home runs and 38 RBI, is currently playing at the University of Washington. Wicker, the team’s second baseman, hit .547 as a junior, with nine home runs, nine triples, 10 doubles and 61 RBI. She currently plays at Iowa State University.
The duo just finished their basketball season and were in the first few days of softball practice when everything shut down.
“Your whole high school career, you’re talking about senior year,” Barrett said. “For the second half of your senior year to just be taken away, that was hard to swallow. It took a while to digest that. It didn’t feel real.”
Jaclyn Ramsey, who has been the head coach at Rogers for 17 years, is as optimistic a person as they come. But she said she spent a lot of time crying that spring.
“They lost that last year with some of their best friends,” she said.
Barrett and Wicker would have taken Rogers back to the state tournament. Who knows, maybe the Rams would have won the whole thing. We’ll never know.
“It’s crushing, honestly,” Ramsey said. “I would put (Barrett and Wicker) up as a middle infield duo against any team in the state. They were by far the best middle infield that any team could field. … They’re best friends. They had a unique ability to work together that maybe not everyone would, because of their friendship.”
Barrett couldn’t even guess how many double plays she and Wicker turned together over their careers.
“We just connected,” she said. “Just always being able to talk about the play, the situation. We’re always super comfortable with each other. It was just really fun. We were constantly talking to each other.”
FOUR-TIME STATE WRESTLING CHAMPIONS AN EXCLUSIVE CLUB
Yusief Lillie has won three state wrestling titles: two at Bonney Lake, his freshman and sophomore years, and one at Tahoma, his junior year. He was part of The News Tribune’s 2020 class of Untouchables, the state’s most unbeatable high school wrestlers.
He was upset that he wouldn’t be able to be a four-time state champion. So upset, in fact, that he and his family moved to Post Falls, Idaho, in the middle of summer, so that’d he be able to win a fourth state championship. But some family issues forced them to move back to Washington in the fall. He’s currently enrolled at Orting High School. He won’t get a Mat Classic state tournament his senior year and will leave high school as a three-time state champion.
“In the beginning, I was pretty upset,” he said. “That was one of my goals since I was little, to be a four-time state champion, four-time All-American. I can’t win that title. It made me pretty sad.”
Lillie has won titles at different weight classes throughout his career. He won the title in the 106-pound weight class as a freshman, 113 as a sophomore and 120 as a junior. He was aiming to win a title in the 126-pound weight class his senior year. He recently signed with Utah Valley University’s wrestling program, which has kept him motivated, despite the shutdown.
“I’m getting a lot more 1-on-1 attention with my club coaches,” he said. “We’re practicing on the little things and getting better. I’ve been able to do a few private lessons. We focus mainly on technique. I feel my technique is way more sound. My movement is better. Overall, I’m a better wrestler. Everything happened for a reason.”
YELM SOFTBALL GAMES ARE ALWAYS A PARTY. PANDEMIC SHUT IT DOWN
Go to a Yelm High School softball game, and the energy jumps out right away. The girls in the dugout are hooting, hollering, wearing cowboy hats and cheering on their teammates. It’s infectious; there’s never a dull moment.
“Our morale, it’s one of a kind,” said Maddie Plevyak, who missed her senior softball season because of the pandemic. “We may be down, but the game is never over. The morale we have in the dugout, it’s just unmatched.”
Yelm has consistently been one of the top Class 3A programs across the state over the past decade. Since 2015, the Tornados have reached the state tournament five times. Two times, Yelm reached the state championship game, in 2017 and 2019.
“It was definitely sad for the seniors,” said Yelm coach Lindsay Walton. “The girls had been with our program since they were freshmen. They see the seniors graduate ahead of them and it’s something they look forward to. … There’s fun memories those girls have of supporting the seniors before them. That was totally taken away from them.”
Plevyak played shortstop on the team that played Garfield in the 2019 state championship game. She didn’t get a chance to make it back-to-back trips to the championship game.
“We just had so much confidence that we’d make it deep, again,” she said. “To have it taken away, it was kind of heartbreaking. … It was difficult for me. I’m so competitive. I just want to win. Having the strong chance that we did to make a run in state, it was definitely heartbreaking.”
Walton wanted to make sure the seniors were recognized, somehow. So she made sure the players were able to come out to the field when the school’s facilities manager painted the names of every senior onto the field. It wasn’t the same as having a senior night, but it provided a small sense of closure for the players and coaching staff.
Still, everyone missed the real thing.
“It was really lonely for me,” Plevyak said. “Not being able to see my friends, not being able to graduate (in-person), have prom. It was a huge adjustment. It’s eye-opening. You don’t realize how great it is until it’s taken away.”
This story was originally published February 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "The Lost Season: Pandemic robbed high school athletes of seasons, lifelong memories."
