PERSEVERANCE IS KEY AS FALL SPORTS ARE POSTPONED By Vincent Giacalone
When the Spring 2020 semester was unceremoniously interrupted by campus moving online, the Stony Brook community looked toward the future — students wondered when they would be able to return to campus, professors worried about making all their curricula virtual and athletes wondered when they would be able to perform again. Now, with the Fall 2020 semester beginning in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, athletes from all fall sports are adjusting to a new normal. With the postponement of the fall season, Zoom meetings and new workout routines, these athletes are forging ahead despite the lack of a destination in sight. For many athletes, having the right mindset, staying positive and being supported by leaders and teammates are the keys to success. Back in July, the America East Conference decided that all fall sports would be postponed “for the duration of the first semester,” without announcing an exact return date. While teams are still able to still train and work out, there are no games or events to train for. Senior Ryan Dearie, a member of the Stony Brook cross country team, noted the strangeness of this environment. “With no races to prepare for, we can do different kinds of workouts at different times of the training cycle,” he said. “In that way, it’s a lot different too.” After recovering from an injury in May, Dearie trained on his own during quarantine to prepare for the new season. What helped him then is the same thing that is helping him now — his teammates. “I was just thinking about trying to be in the best shape I could for my team,” Dearie said. The importance of teammates and camaraderie is a common theme among fall sports, with athletes finding solace and comfort with those in similar positions as them. They can relate to each other and share their similar experiences. “I expected it to be kind of difficult, but the team makes it so much easier,” freshman forward Makenna Robinson said. Robinson is one of the new recruits to the women’s soccer team. Although her mandatory two-week quarantine upon arrival to campus made it harder to adjust, it didn’t bother her for long. “Honestly, it’s been a fun experience,” she said, referring to her time on campus. For other athletes, the unknowns that have come along with the pandemic have affected their psyches. The uncertainty can be daunting but also motivating. Senior forward Fanny Götesson, also on the women’s soccer team, felt the pressure of the pandemic over the summer and still feels it now. Since she was in Sweden during the summer, she was unsure whether she would return to Stony Brook. “Are we gonna be able to go back to school at all?” she said. “Will I even get into the country because I’m international?”
Götesson arrived in the U.S. safely, and like the rest of her teammates, was quarantined upon arrival. Even though she is glad to be back training with her team, there is still another concern sitting at the back of her mind. “I think the hardest part is not knowing if we’re actually going to have a season in the spring either,” Götesson said. However, that same uneasiness manifests itself in the opposite direction for freshman setter Torri Henry on the volleyball team. Henry has stayed motivated for this semester by preparing for anything that might arise in an uncertain future. “Honestly, I think it might be the unknown because you just never know,” she said. “We could’ve been playing right now so we just always have to stay prepared.” In the short-term, however, the postponement can have some unintended benefits. Sophomore Lindsey Dodenhoff, a member of the cross country team, thinks that this extra time can be a good thing, especially for the incoming freshmen who are getting their first taste of college life. “In a way, it kinda is like a blessing in disguise,” Dodenhoff said. “It takes a little while to get used to college and you have a little bit of time to get used to it before we do get to compete.” As important as teammates and time to prepare are, it’s the coaches and other de facto leaders who have guided athletes through these bizarre times. Their leadership, dedication and guidance have all helped others make the transition to this new way of life. Junior outside hitter Hailey Barden, one of the few upperclassmen on the volleyball team, praised the coaching staff. “I’m really confident in our coaches because they just really care about us,” Barden said. She credited the summer quarantine for giving her time to reflect and improve her confidence in herself. “I really found out how to take care of myself mentally,” Barden said. “I feel good now because I feel like I found myself.” Leadership is not just found in coaches, however. On the football team, it is found in the seniors and veterans who know the ins-and-outs of their program, their training and their university. Redshirt-senior defensive back TJ Morrison expressed his view on the situation. “I feel like as a unit we’re pretty much focused on like, the day-by-day to stay healthy,” Morrison said. “Make sure you’re doing the right things, working hard and taking those steps to be where you want to be when you finally get it.” While these athletes play a wide range of sports, the common threads of team unity, good mindsets and positivity have been unanimously shared among those interviewed by The Statesman. Despite the difficult situation and the postponement of their seasons, these athletes are making adjustments to adapt to this new way of life.
STONY BROOK FOOTBALL PREPARES FOR UNPRECEDENTED SPRING SEASON By Ethan Tam
It is the second week of September. The Stony Brook football team should be hard at work preparing for their scheduled matchup with the Florida Atlantic Owls, a strong Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) team that won the Conference USA championship last year with an 11–3 record. The last time the Seawolves played an FBS team in the Sunshine State, it was No. 19 South Florida in 2017, a game that Stony Brook led at halftime and tied in the fourth quarter before the Bulls pulled away. Instead, Stony Brook stayed home this weekend. There was no game in Florida, nor will there be any for the rest of 2020. All 11 games on the Seawolves’ schedule were wiped on July 17, when the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) announced that it was suspending the fall football season, with the intent to play in spring 2021 instead. “It was definitely a smack in the face,” redshirt-senior quarterback and team captain Tyquell Fields said in an interview with The Statesman. “I didn’t know how to take it at first. But, I took on a ‘take things one day a time’ and ‘control what you can control’ approach and I ran with it.” Even with the uncertainty spiraling earlier in July, Stony Brook scheduled another FBS opponent in Western Michigan after Fordham and the Patriot League pulled out of the planned season opener. “We scheduled it thinking we would play it not knowing what the outcome would be, obviously understanding that as each day moves, things could change,” Stony Brook head coach Chuck Priore said in an interview with The Statesman. The CAA gave its member schools the opportunity to pursue a fall schedule independent of the conference, which some teams such as James Madison explored before eventually reneging. That possibility was never looked at by the Stony Brook administration, even if it meant triggering clauses in the scheduling contracts — specifically a COVID-19 cancelation clause for the Western Michigan game — that led to the Seawolves not receiving the planned hundreds of thousands in guarantee money. “I 100% agree with the team’s decision to not play,” Fields said. “Some guys were not in shape coming back, and that’s very important. If we would have played, I felt like a lot of injuries would have happened.” COVID-19 took away Stony Brook’s ability to hold traditional spring practices, which Priore admitted was a challenge for his team. “It was certainly different when the team left not knowing whether we would be back,” he said. “We talked about being the most organized and efficient program in the CAA, so we took hold of that both academically and with our workouts. We had tons of Zoom football meetings over the course of those three months [that] they would have gone and learned things. We did a lot of student-coaching interaction and bonding of our players, [who] got to know each other better.”
The pandemic meant that Fields — who put up a single-season program record 2,809 total offensive yards in his first year as Stony Brook’s starting quarterback — had to adjust his workout routine, with a strong focus on growing mentally from his junior season. His 2,471 passing yards in 2019 ranked second all-time for the Seawolves behind T.J. Moriarty’s 2,495 in 2004. “From my position as quarterback, it’s hard getting in timing with all my receivers and building a relationship with the guys on the offense,” he said. “While I was at home, I was running to stay in shape and throwing to one guy, [redshirt-freshman wide receiver] Shawn Harris [Jr.]. I really didn’t get to lift weights as much because I didn’t have access to any. But when I got back here, they made sure to get us back in shape, and I feel faster and stronger than ever.” Priore’s squad resumed in-person training in August with new safety precautions in place. All players undergo health screenings before practice, then they are divided into small groups, each one with different practice times; workouts require masks and social distancing; and athletes who use the weight room must keep to their own stations. Although the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has not approved a final blueprint for spring football, Priore disclosed that the current plan is for an eightgame regular season and a postseason over a
13-week period, with the final date of regular-season competition on April 17. Priore said that an NCAA meeting to discuss the matter will occur this week and the number of conference games for Stony Brook’s spring season is not set in stone. For redshirt-senior defensive back TJ Morrison, who was also named one of four team captains back in December, the leadership position became even more imporant to him as the pandemic separated the team in the offseason. “It’s easy when you see somebody every day, but having to talk on Zoom and not being able to have that human interaction every day, it’s kind of hard to be a leader,” Morrison said in an interview with The Statesman. “But I feel we did a great job with the team… We have great pieces everywhere. Our D-line is great, our linebackers are great, our D-backs are young and athletic. As long as we bring it all together and just play as a team and one unit, I feel like we’ll really be successful.” It remains to be seen just when Stony Brook Football will take the field again in an actual game. Having ended the 2019 season dropping six of the final seven, the team is hungry for redemption after missing the FCS Playoffs for the first time since 2016. While no player would call the Seawolves’ decision to scrap its fall season and play in the spring ideal, it provided a moment of clarity after a summer of uncertainty. All eyes are pointed to a few months in the future, when the team will hopefully make its return to the gridiron.
Colonial A thletic A ssociation Teams
FRESHMAN ATHLETES ADAPT TO MULTIPLE REALITIES THIS FALL By Ryan Pavich
The 2020-21 school year was already going to be an unfamiliar landscape for athletics, with the shift to online classes and the postponement of fall sports creating a unique pause in the otherwise cyclical nature of training and game action. The freshman class of student-athletes will be dealing with this rapid change while also acclimating to the usual nerves and challenges that come with entering a new environment at the university, and jumping to an entirely new level of competition. Fortunately for the freshman, Stony Brook has been preparing for months to introduce them to a structure that will not overwhelm them. “It’s been a lot different than what I expected, having to quarantine for the first two weeks and then having to move into my dorm by myself,” freshman forward Makenna Robinson said. Robinson is a member of the women’s soccer team. “But honestly it wasn’t that bad. I think having my teammates is good. My roommate, [freshman goalkeeper] Shannon [Kilian], she was a big help with everything.” There are many new regulations set in place for athletes to safely practice and to maintain their peak conditioning. Teams are split into practice groups, and most of the focus is aimed toward individual work. Team meetings are scheduled on Zoom and there is plenty of communication across the board for the various sports programs, but ultimately the responsibility falls on the athlete to keep up during such a turbulent time, one with no indication of when games may actually begin. Despite this uncertainty, the work has created at least some sense of normalcy for incoming players. “It’s definitely easier having a team and the guys on my back to help me through this time,” freshman midfielder Trevor Harrison said. Harrison is a member of the men’s soccer team. “It was a pretty easy transition, everything was straightforward. Obviously, COVID has [required] a lot of rules that we have to follow, but everything seems pretty fair.”
Some of the athletes have adjusted well, in part because this is the only experience they have had at the college level. Unlike their older teammates, who have known a pre-COVID-19 world on campus, the freshmen have had to head right into college life as is, and they have done so seamlessly. “Well, I really don’t have anything to compare it to because this is my first year,” freshman setter Torri Henry said. “Honestly I feel a lot safer too because the precautions back home aren’t as strict as they are here so it’s just been getting to know the volleyball team because that’s who’s in my social bubble right now.” Henry added that her coaches are always present and available to answer any questions that the team may have, and they have helped guide her as she settles in on campus, alongside her academic advisors. The transition to online classes has made it easier for her to stay on track academically, and not having to physically attend classes has helped to keep her school life calm. “This definitely hasn’t been easy, but I mean, I wasn’t here last year so this is all I know,” freshman quarterback Drew Guttieri said. Guttieri is a member of the football team. “Everything that my experience has been so far is what COVID has done for us, so I’m just trying to adjust as best as possible. All of the guys have been very nice, it’s been helping me a lot. So when it comes to my adjustment it hasn’t been too bad, ‘cause I wasn’t here last year I didn’t know how things really run. But it’s been good.” After also dealing with the chaos that came with the first few months of the pandemic, Henry believes that now she’s in a more stable situation. “I guess it was kind of difficult only because our orientations and stuff were online and I was getting a ton of emails and I didn’t know which was what,” Henry said about the period between graduating high school and moving into Stony Brook. “It’s honestly been pretty smooth for the most part though, because for high school we didn’t have any closure or anything so we didn’t know
what was gonna happen next and if/when we were gonna get to campus, what would happen with the pandemic and all that.” Robinson echoed those thoughts on what she thought the transition into college would be like. “I think I kind of went into it expecting it to be hard, just moving so far away from home,” Robinson said. “I expected it to be kind of difficult, but the team makes it so much easier, because I’m already like, I already have the family.” The one area where things have been noticeably different for the freshmen has been the bubble environment that they have had to accept in order to properly prepare for a season. “The only big difference I’d say is socialization,” Robinson said. “We want to make sure that everyone around us, especially our teammates, is keeping safe. So we don’t really, I haven’t been and my other classmates that are living here on campus, we haven’t really let anyone into our inner bubble yet. So we haven’t really met any new people, but it’s okay. Yeah, it’s been kind of an easy adjustment, since it’s been so long [that] we’ve been doing this virtual thing.” Still, the players have each other, and the upperclassmen have been instrumental in making this adjustment easier as well. “They’ve been helping me out, telling me the ins and outs,” Harrison said about his teammates. “What I’m supposed to be like, how I’m supposed to have good character and just helping me prosper.” Guttieri also shared the advice that the football team has given to him. “Just take it day by day,” Guttieri said. “You never know what’s gonna come next, so just take it day by day and see where this takes us.” Right now it’s unknown when they will be able to play, but this next generation of Seawolves is taking every step necessary to be ready for when their opportunity comes to them.
FORMER STONY BROOK PITCHER TOM KOEHLER DISCUSSES COVID-19’S IMPACT ON SPORTS By Alfonso Migliarini
Since the cancelation and postponement of sports in mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, sports leagues and teams — both professional and collegiate — have been planning and searching for ways to continue with their seasons. From the collegiate perspective, the burden COVID-19 has placed on student-athletes can not be understated. Collegiate athletics have been affected in every aspect, with competition, eligibility and recruiting all directly impacted during the absence of play. To get a well-rounded perspective of the impact on athletes at Stony Brook, former Seawolves pitcher Tom Koehler shared his thoughts on athletics during the pandemic. Inducted as a member of the Stony Brook Athletics Hall of Fame in 2016, Koehler spent four years pitching at Stony Brook from 2005 to 2008. In those four years, Koehler recorded 297 strikeouts and 17 wins, which rank third and ninth, respectively, among Seawolves pitchers all-time. The two-time America East All-Conference Second Team pitcher was selected in the 18th round by the then-Florida Marlins in 2008, made his Major League Baseball (MLB) debut in 2012 and just recently retired, concluding a seven-year playing career.
Uncertainty is a huge theme when it comes to sports and COVID-19, as many professional sports teams and leagues have had to improvise and adjust on the fly to continue to put on a good display of competition. With the postponement of fall sports in the America East Conference and other conferences across the country, Koehler said he believes athletes must be mentally prepared to not miss a beat. “I think when you get to that level, all athletes are mentally prepared,” Koehler said. “Each one of those guys you see doing their thing is so routine-oriented and such hard workers that they are able to adjust on the fly… So sure, this is different. This is different for everybody, but I bet everybody is prepared.” Koehler’s confidence in athletes is connected to his time at Stony Brook and lessons he learned as a student-athlete, playing for longtime head coach Matt Senk. “All athletes in general are really good at time management, especially when you’re in college,” Koehler said. “If you use it as a positive, I think there’s room for a lot of guys to become better at what they are doing. But I also think there’s some guys who might slack off for the time being and not necessarily use the time well.” In conjunction with his career as an MLB pitcher, Koehler also served as a player repre-
sentative for the MLB Players Association during his playing days. However, he does not believe that observing how the MLB was able to play in 2020 would be helpful for the NCAA. Koehler noted that while they are both sports organizations, the NCAA could never function on the same scale as the MLB, citing financial reasons, and student-athlete courses and workload as the main differences. “I think the MLB has done a very good job once the season has gotten started,” Koehler said. He also expressed his disappointment in the contentious public negotiations that MLB endured before the season started, saying he wished the heated dialogue was “a little bit of a cleaner process,” but added that he was happy the players stood their ground and is “happy they are playing.” Over time, fans will continue to see how sports and the rest of the world adjusts to COVID-19. Sports teams and organizations will continue to adapt and attempt to produce quality competition for both the public and their athletes. Whatever the future holds, Koehler believes that athletes, specifically collegiate student-athletes, are uniquely suited to perform during these times of uncertainty.
SAM KAMARA’S FIFTH SEASON TO PLAY OUT DIFFERENTLY THAN PLANNED By Ethan Tam
When the Stony Brook football team kicked off last season’s campaign with a hot 4-1 start, the play of redshirt-senior defensive lineman Sam Kamara anchored a Seawolves defense that allowed just 14.3 points per game against fellow Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) opponents. He carried the team with 16 tackles and three sacks before suffering a shoulder injury in the second half of Stony Brook’s 31-27 victory over Rhode Island. Kamara would not play another snap in 2019. The Seawolves ended the season 1-6 in his absence, and Kamara still finished second on the team in sacks and tied for eighth in tackles for loss despite playing just five games. On Dec. 31, 2019, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) granted him a waiver, allowing Kamara to come back for a fifth season to end his collegiate career on his own terms. Those plans were altered when Stony Brook followed the Colonial Athletic Association’s (CAA) lead in suspending its fall football season and eyeing spring play instead, due to safety concerns about playing through the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s hard for me, being that it’s my senior season and it’s got to go down this way,” Kamara said in an interview with The Statesman. “It is what it is, though. I can’t control it. Like [redshirt-senior quarterback] Tyquell [Fields] said,
I’ve just got to control what I’ve got to control and just hope that it’s going to be a great one.” Kamara is confident in his health, describing himself physically as at “100 percent.” Having fully recovered from his shoulder injury before the start of the pandemic, COVID-19 did not directly impact his rehabilitation process. “I’m in good shape right now,” he said. Now a redshirt-senior, the defensive tackle believes that although football is normally played in the fall, the team is ready and will not be affected by the postponement of the games. However, he did find it hard to personally adjust to the ‘new normal,’ especially as it pertained to the ordinary interactions with his teammates. “Not being around the guys — being around my brothers — that’s been a real big change for me,” Kamara said. “I’m used to being around my boys and the camaraderie in the locker room. I’d say that’s the biggest change and the biggest difficulty I have with COVID.” Kamara is not the only player on the Seawolves’ roster whose final collegiate season will be affected by COVID-19. Graduate wide receiver Malik Love, who transferred to Stony Brook from another CAA school in New Hampshire, saw the program as a perfect fit for him when he made his decision in April. The Seawolves appealed to him because of Fields’ talent, their experienced offensive line and their need for receivers after
graduating wideouts Nick Anderson, Andrew Trent and Jean Constant. Love’s arrival at Stony Brook has been far from traditional. “It’s definitely been different,” he said in an interview with The Statesman. “It’s definitely been hard. Being in one particular group and getting to know the guys in our group has kind of helped, but obviously the scenario is different whenever you can all come together and meet all the guys on the team at once. That would definitely be easier.” Playing for New Hampshire from 2016 to 2019, Love’s Wildcats faced the Seawolves four times, with each team winning twice. The idea of now playing for a school that he had previously competed against makes his Stony Brook tenure that much more special to him as he praised the program’s work ethic and dedication to success. Both Love and Kamara are among the most experienced members of the Stony Brook locker room, with the former adjusting to a new yet familiar team, and the latter looking to solidify his Seawolves legacy by adding on to an already-impressive resume. “I’m like an old man,” Kamara said with a laugh. “I know that I’ve got a lot of young guys looking at me, and I’ve just got to step into that role of being a leader that everybody needs.”
STONY BROOK RECRUITMENT PLANS CHANGE AMIDST COVID-19 PRECAUTIONS By Ryan Magill
When the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States in March, college sports came to a screeching halt. Now in September, some conferences have resumed play, but the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has kept one of the most important parts of collegiate athletics on pause — recruitment. The NCAA instituted a ban on in-person recruiting in March and has extended the ban on a monthly basis. Other subsequent rulings have left coaches and administrators trying to hit a moving target while they attempt to do their jobs. “I think it’s really required our coaches to be creative,” Stony Brook Director of Athletics Shawn Heilbron said in an interview with The Statesman. “We have a lot to showcase at Stony Brook, we’re very proud of what we have. And so, you know, for our coaches to figure out new ways, without having the opportunity for in-person visits has been important.” Though some high school and club teams across the country have made efforts to return to play, the coaches at Stony Brook and across the NCAA have not been able to meet with any prospects in person. The result for many coaches has been a heavy reliance on Zoom and other video-conference apps to evaluate potential prospects. “We were super proactive and came up with different ways to recruit,” Tobias Bischof said. Bischof is the head coach of the Stony Brook women’s soccer team. “[Zoom] works decently well for us, I would say, we created a Sparks page, what highlights Stony Brook and us as a program and then we organize now virtual tours [of campus].” While the process of recruiting online is certainly new and challenging, some coaches like Kristin Belzung, head coach of the volleyball team, and Ryan Anatol, head coach of the men’s soccer team, see the benefits to a “Zoom workout” for new recruits. Now coaches have the opportunity to review a player and speak to them later in the year than they normally would. “Honestly, it’s not a terrible thing,” Belzung said. “It gives some of the recruits a little opportunity to get to know themselves a little better and what they’re looking for so that when they get a little further — you know, they’re a little later in their career when they’re going through the recruiting process — but for us we’re still communicating, we’re trying to stay in touch with the people that we know we like, we’d like to see film when we can.” Anatol has recruited online before, giving him a basis for transitioning to a completely online process. “There has been a culture of having to recruit online through video, so we need to do a lot more of that now with local players,” Anatol said, discussing how his team has used video calls in the past to recruit players in other countries. “It’s not completely foreign to us, having to recruit online, but it is a little bit more challenging.”
However, in addition to their ban on recruiting, the NCAA has potentially further complicated the issue by ruling to grant all fall athletes another year of eligibility. Though Heilbron called the situation a “bit of a log jam,” every coach agreed that the eligibility ruling was necessary to do right by their athletes. This year’s graduating class, depending on their academic status, may choose to return as athletes next fall. Finances will also play into their decisions, as Heilbron mentioned that there will be a “conversation that we’ll have with our coaches” about how scholarships will be affected. “Some guys may choose different[ly] for various reasons and then that will be respected, but the opportunity lies ahead for them to make sure that they have the opportunity to finish out their careers correctly,” Football head coach Chuck Priore said. Unfortunately for all parties, the end does not appear to be near just yet. As Bischof said, “We’re expecting in the next round… September 16, where the next NCAA ruling comes out, there is a good chance that the [recruiting dead] period gets extended even longer.” Since all sports at Stony Brook are postponed until the spring, Heilbron and the athletic department’s main focus is clear — make the current situation work the best they can.
“There has been a culture of having to recruit online through video, so we need to do a lot more of that now with local players. It’s not completely foreign to us... but it is a little bit more challenging.” - Ryan Anatol, Men’s Soccer Coach “Our goal right now is just for campus to operate in a healthy manner for us to be able to sustain what’s been going on,” Heilbron said. “We’ll get back to in-person recruiting but right now we’re here to be great partners and make sure the campus is able to continue running as effectively as possible.”
A merica East Conference Teams