University of New Hampshire Athletics
The Wildcat football team is scheduled to play its first home game Sept. 12 against Richmond.
3/20/2020 2:32:00 PM | General, UNH Insider
AD Marty Scarano: 'We're Going to Rely on Each Other'
DURHAM, N.H. – For Marty Scarano, the director of athletics at the University of New Hampshire for the past 20 years, the tipping point came Wednesday, March 11. Nine days ago.
That night, the National Basketball Association announced it was suspending its season.
"I think the lightbulb went on for me that day," Scarano said this week from his office in a quiet UNH Field House. "That's when I realized this was going to get a whole lot worse. The Ivy League earlier in the day had announced it was canceling its entire spring season and I remember in this building people were thinking, 'Oh God, that seems rash.'"
The Ivy League was on to something.
The NBA made its announcement that night and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic picked up speed rapidly from there.
The leagues UNH is a member of, Hockey East and America East in particular, moved quickly from the idea of conducting their tournaments with no fans allowed in the building – remember the phrase 'essential personnel only?' - to having no tournaments at all.
By Thursday afternoon, the NCAA had decreed that it was canceling all winter and spring tournaments, bringing collegiate athletics to a standstill.
The UNH ski team and its fellow competitors were shut down halfway through the four-day NCAA Ski Championships in Montana and sent home.
Wildcat sophomore Anna Metzler, excited about being a last-chance qualifier into the NCAA Division I Swimming & Diving Championships, found out there would be no championships to attend. She was scheduled to fly to Atlanta this past Monday and was to be UNH's first swimmer to compete in the NCAAs since 2015.
Instead, she took a flight home to Germany on Monday.
The UNH lacrosse team was five games into its season and about to start the America East portion of its schedule, but rather got a spring break that will extend through the rest of the year.
The gymnastics team's meet at Maryland was canceled along with the EAGL Championships that were set for this Saturday, March 21, at the University of North Carolina.
"It's a strange feeling," said UNH swimming and diving coach Josh Willman on Thursday. "I'm home and I live out in the boonies and I was telling friends it kind of feels like we're having a severe power outage. But I have TV. You can't really go anywhere. I'm trying not to watch the news a ton. It's depressing. I sent the team an email this morning. You're trying to keep everyone's spirits up. It's all nuts."
There's a bit of an ironic twist to a society that is suddenly athletics-free, Scarano feels.
"If we ever needed sports, we need it right now," he said. "I can't watch the news all the time. It's the same old, same old. You let yourself get depressed if you think about that all day long."
Scarano sent a letter last week to the 525 student athletes on the school's intercollegiate teams encouraging them to look out for each other and their communities and is making sure his coaches, administrators and support staff keep lines of communications open and active.
Caring for and tending to the student athletes and their well-being is priority number one, the AD stressed.
"We have fabulous coaches," Scarano said. "They're all smart people and we're going to figure this out and we're going to rely on each other."
Jim Boulanger in track & field, Sean McDonnell in football, Robin Balducci in field hockey, Cory Schwartz in skiing, Bill Herrion in men's basketball are among the most tenured of the coaches in the department.
They and their colleagues, head coaches and assistant coaches, in the Field House and Whittemore Center – up and down UNH's coaching lineup – have been teaching and nurturing student athletes for years and years, many of them decades.
UNH President James Dean announced Wednesday that online-only schooling that was originally scheduled to run a couple of weeks was being extended to the end of the semester so students will not be returning to live on campus.
There will be no games or practices this spring and when practices for the fall season will begin has yet to be determined.
There is much work to be done, many conversations to be had, between now and then.
Discussions of eligibility for athletes and who might or might not be allowed an extra year to participate, and the talk of finances and other residual effects from the suspension of play have already begun at the school, league and NCAA level and will be ongoing.
"There will be an enormous financial fallout from all this," Scarano said. "Schools have lost revenue. Leagues have lost a considerable amount of money and are going to be in various financial situations. That's going to fall on members. Take Hockey East. They generate most of their revenue out of championships, other than dues. That's a scary part of this, once we get beyond the virus. What's left is going to be significant."
Scarano's message to coaches and staff Thursday concluded with this: "I am enormously confident in all of you and know deeply we will get through this and come out on the other side - we all look forward to that day. Take care, Marty."
Women's soccer generally kicks off the fall season and plays its first game the third week of August. Men's soccer traditionally follows a week later. Those schedules have yet to be posted.
The next game on the UNH calendar at the moment is football's road contest at Kansas on Saturday, Sept. 5. The home opener is the next Saturday, Sept. 12, against Richmond, a Colonial Athletic Association rival of the Wildcats.
Those days may be more eagerly awaited than ever.
Allen Lessels
@UNHInsider
Allen.Lessels@unh.edu
Saturday, October 24
Saturday, October 24
Sunday, October 18
Saturday, October 17