Here Comes the Sun

The end of two Final Fours mark a milestone in the toughest year of our lives.

No one needs me — or anyone else, frankly — to restate the obvious. The past year has been hard on everyone, to varying degrees.

I consider myself to be among the more fortunate during the pandemic. I continued to work in various capacities, Payday Protection and various local grants allowed my wife’s business to survive, and having my children home — 5 and 1 at the outset, now 6 and 2 — has been a joy. Being able to experience more of this precious time in their lives is a blessing, the rainbow amid the storm.

But juggling domestic obligations, my older son’s schooling, and work is physically and mentally exhausting. Not seeing friends takes an emotional toll; so, too, does having to reevaluate relationships.

Watching peers use their platforms to downplay the reality of COVID-19 spread, lob conspiratorial accusations, and sometimes push outright misinformation, in the pursuit of pushing others to provide us with entertainment (and them, paychecks), proved indescribably disheartening.

A highly contagious, global pandemic being dumbed down to antagonistic take-fodder, particularly in the weeks leading up to the college football season, reflects the toxicity of the Embrace Debate mindset at its nadir.

I sometimes ponder, did this crowd get into sports media with a goal of being incurious know-it-alls and noxious trolls? Was it always the goal, or a byproduct of an unhealthy environment we’ve all allowed to spawn?

Then I think about why I pursued sports journalism. Certainly articles I read in my formative years influenced both my decision, and how I approach the work. But even before growing into a voracious consumer of sportswriting in my teens, the true motivation came from the simple, childhood love of sports.

I have never allowed myself to become so jaded as to not appreciate remarkable feats, whether it was covering Christian McCaffrey’s Pac-12 Championship Game and subsequent Rose Bowl during his Heisman Trophy runner-up season, or witnessing Kris Jenkins’ game-winning 3-pointer to win the 2016 National Championship.

At the same time, I don’t know if I appreciated anything in sports with the same childlike giddiness I had in my youth. Until this weekend.

For me, like millions around the U.S., the harsh reality of COVID-19 set in with the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA Tournament. March Madness is so much a part of my development that I still have some of those Pizza Hut-sponsored promotion basketballs at my parents’ house, and can detail memories off the top of my head.

The 1996 Tournament was the first after my brother died, just a few months later, and it provided some welcome escapism. The next year, when Arizona won the national championship, was the first time in the 15 months following his death, that I saw my parents cry from joy and not sorrow.

Basketball long functioned as an outlet for me, a source for expression and happiness as a kid. As I got older, and the pressure of getting a college scholarship weighed on me, basketball increasingly became more burdensome than joyful.

My senior year of high school was a miserable time in my life. It felt like with every new recruiting letter sent to me, I lost a friend. Once spring arrived, and the daily phone calls from small-school coaches wore on me, I told my dad I didn’t want to play in college. And I didn’t.

I still loved basketball, but not in the same way. As this pandemic began, however, cancelling the NCAA Tournament and dragging into the fall, life happened.

Doctors discovered kidney disease in my youngest son just before his birth, and it’s a daily challenge for my family. Before the pandemic, he was relegated to the hospital for lengthy stays almost monthly, and underwent several surgeries by the time he was 1.

Early into the pandemic, I learned I could be one of his best options for a new kidney when the time in his life comes that the more heavily impacted finally fails. Now, I was not a heavy drinker — not since the birth of my first son, anyway.

But realizing the responsibility I might bear for my youngest, I completely cut my weekly beer-after-everyone’s-gone-to-bed from the rotation. The last nine months have been the longest point in my life without any alcohol since I was a senior in high school.

For my Pandemic Birthday, my wife surprised me with a new basketball hoop. I shoot every day, oftentimes with my sons. Less than not playing for a Div. 2 school (or smaller), my greatest basketball regret is allowing myself to get out of playing shape to the point I’ve never been nearly as good in intramurals or city league play as I could have or should have been.

I have been steadily building back my skill set with the goal of balling out once the pandemic runs its course.

And then came March.

The loss of the NCAA Tournament a year ago saddened me, but more so scared me. I realized I never truly processed the void not having those three weeks left me in until it came back; that whole absence makes the heart grow fonder thing.

Beyond just having the entertainment, the excitement of March Madness back, the sacrifices the athletes in both Div. I Tournaments made touched me; heck, it struck me reporting my story on Bellarmine’s first-ever postseason, not even in the NCAA Tournament.

Knights coach Scott Davenport shared with me a story about their rally from down double-digits in the second half to beat ASUN counterpart Stetson. It was a Saturday night, and was the kind of effort that earns a college basketball team a postgame celebration with their classmates.

Only, because of the pandemic, they instead went back to their dorms and apartments to be alone.

Newly crowned national champion Stanford’s month-plus away from campus due to Santa Clara County’s group-size mandate gives new meaning to the grind college athletes face.

For the Cardinal to be away from home for roughly nine weeks, and it culminate in a championship, is the kind of triumph of human spirit that made me want to pursue sports journalism.

Not long after Stanford escaped a game for the ages with an Arizona team that absorbed every run and responded until it had an opportunity to win at the buzzer, tears stung my eyes; not out of sadness for the program that paid my wife’s way through college, nor out of fear over the lingering pandemic.

And it was the second time in less than 24 hours that I cried happy tears. The previous night, still buzzing from the instant classic between UCLA and Gonzaga, I needed more basketball content.

I’d been saving the finale of the Netflix docuseries, Basketball or Nothing, following the Chinle High School team from the Navajo Nation. Chinle was a school I’d played against in my own prep days, so I got a personal enjoyment from seeing places I’d been.

More so, the series was an excellent work of sports journalism that captured the challenges families on the Reservation face, and the dedication of the young men on that team. Spoiler alert for those yet to see it, but when one of the Wildcats’ seniors learns in the finale he’s receiving a full academic scholarship to pursue electrical engineering, I sobbed.

It was roughly 19 hours later, outside an Islands Burgers, that I cried again. The restaurant’s outdoor speakers played The Beatles “Here Comes the Sun,” and with one edition of March Madness complete in a one-point classic, and another approaching its end after one of the greatest games ever, the past trying year feels like it’s coming full circle.

Perhaps it’s corny, maybe naive or overly idyllic, particularly in light of the reforms college athletics still need. But basketball, and sports in general, function as a microcosm of our very existence, and the pandemic year has underscored that perseverance, relationships, commitment and passion through difficulties can bring joy at the end.