ITCHING TO GET BACK
5/6/2020 3:55:00 PM | General
Baylor Student-Athletes Have Adapted During Challenging Times
(Editor's note: This is the fifth and final part of a five-part series called "Staying Connected," which discusses the different and innovative ways Baylor Athletics is trying to reach and assist student-athletes during the COVID-19 crisis.)
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Back home for the first time in three years, Marieke van der Mark has had to live with "mom's rules" again.
For men's tennis freshman Sebastian Nothhaft, his return to China meant a 14-day quarantine where he couldn't even leave the house for groceries. Softball's Nicky Dawson is back home in Baton Rouge, La., tutoring her two younger siblings.
Soccer junior Elena Reyna stayed in Waco to go through rehabilitation for a torn ACL with her older sister. Mark Milton, a sophomore on the football team, had to become more tech-savvy for the transition to online classes.
"You would think me being this young, I would be better at it, but I'm not the best," Milton said. "Once I got it down, it was pretty easy. You're not physically face-to-face with the person, but the interactions are the same. You still have the same small talk, you get the same amount of work done. We're just not physically face-to-face."
Due to shutdowns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, Baylor's 500-plus student-athletes have had to adapt to the "new normal" of online courses and tutoring, separation anxiety, having the discipline to get into a regular routine and, in some cases, moving back home for the first time in years.
"I don't think this is easy for anyone," said volleyball's Braya Hunt, who hopes to get into Baylor grad school for physical therapy after finishing her undergrad studies this month. "It makes me more thankful for the last 3 ½ years. The things that I really love about getting an education is not studying . . . it's going through it with my classmates that makes it so fun to learn, especially at Baylor with such great professors. There's a huge chunk of that that's missing."
In each case, though, they're making the most of a challenging time in their collegiate careers.
"I'm telling you, those first few weeks were rough," said Jalen Seals, a junior from Fort Worth who competes in the triple jump and long jump for the track & field team. "It was all about just making a schedule and sticking to it. That made it a lot easier to get ahead, just because it's kind of at your own pace, essentially, at that point. Once you get ahead, it really isn't that bad."
THE INITIAL SHOCK
Other that having to transition to online classes and tutoring, the NCAA's decision to cancel the remainder of the winter and spring sports' seasons took far less of a toll on fall sports' athletes like football's Milton, Hunt and van der Mark from the Final Four volleyball squad and soccer's Reyna.
But, with spring sports like baseball and softball off to promising starts, there was an initial shock.
"We were really getting in a nice groove, really bonding. Winning is fun," Dawson said. "When it shut down, I don't think we believed it at first, just because we had heard things from other programs, other conferences. So, when it hit us, we didn't know what to do, because it was just a big unknown, a big question mark."
Seals wasn't with the handful of Baylor athletes in Albuquerque, N.M., when it was announced that the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships and the entire outdoor track season would be shut down. But, the Bears were just a week away from the opening outdoor meet.
"At the time, we were in shock that it was canceled, because people were actually at nationals, waiting for the competition to start," Seals said. "I thought it was a really bad idea because it didn't seem as serious at the time. Now, looking back on it, that was absolutely necessary . . . because you don't want to have thousands of people at a convention center in Albuquerque. It makes sense, we just didn't see it at the time."
The hardest part for Andy Thomas, a senior catcher on the baseball team, was the unknown.
"For Type-A personalities, who operate knowing what's going on every move, that was really hard," Thomas said. "It would have been extremely painful if we wouldn't have gotten (an extra year of) eligibility. For me, and some other people as well, if we did not get drafted, that would have been it. So now, getting that year back, that gives you that confidence again to go out and play another full year and prove what we were capable of doing."
ADAPT AND ADJUST
Once the decisions were made to cancel the rest of the winter and spring sports' seasons, essentially shut down the campus and go online with classes, there was a period of adjusting to the "new normal."
Elijah Gifford, a sophomore hurdler on the track team, said he misses the "change of environment," just walking across campus and "being able to sit in the classroom."
"I like to feed off my peers, feed off the professors," he said. "Being in class, the professors go off-topic and give you little tips and minor details that they usually don't do on these online classes.
"But once I got settled into a good routine, the good part is I've been a lot more productive. I get up, eat breakfast, do my work, take a break to go outside or go for a run, and then come back and finish my work. My day is over at 2 or 3 p.m., and I have the rest of the day just to relax and sit outside and soak up some sun."
The online classes were old hat for Nothhaft, who had a similar routine through high school while he was playing in tennis tournaments around the world.
In the tutoring sessions, he said, "it's not easy to communicate through a computer screen, so it's not just me in an awkward position."
"I'm just thankful I'm not taking courses like calculus or pre-cal," Nothhaft said, "because I think that would have been even more challenging. It's kind of weird at first, especially the first couple of sessions, to get used to speaking through a screen. But eventually, it becomes normal."
In addition to the online classes and tutoring, the student-athletes have been able to stay connected with weekly team meetings, "Sic'em Small Talks" with the Character Formation team and biweekly meetings with the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.
Van der Mark said she had a routine of going by the Character Formation offices almost every day "just to say 'hi' to them or rant about my classes or whatever was going on with my life." Now, she hangs out with them every Tuesday on the "Sic'em Small Talks" on Zoom.
"We just talk about life," she said. "I think we've talked about Tiger King 20 times now. It's just good to see everyone. It's really good to hear that everyone else is going through the same things that I'm going through. And it doesn't really have an end point to it and no real education to it. It's just, 'Hey, I'm here.'''
As the SAAC Vice President and chairman for the Golden Bruiser Awards Committee, Thomas has helped with the planning for the virtual Golden Bruiser Awards that will be announced starting next Tuesday, May 12.
"It wasn't as much of a struggle as just frustration that we put all this work into something, and then you won't see it through," said Thomas, a senior from Murrietta, Calif. "But, the administration has done a great job making sure we still have that representation and all the acknowledgements that I think the student-athletes deserve. Marcus (Sedberry) and his team have made it a priority to make sure those things still happen."
Seals, a junior from Fort Worth who's in charge of the SAAC campus liaison subcommittee, said his group started "trying to figure out what we wanted to do for next year" once the campus was shut down.
"We wanted to host a community service and food truck event. We had that almost finished right before Baylor shut down," he said. "We're just basically getting the ball rolling now so that we can make sure that next year we can get it executed a whole lot better and a lot faster."
Going through some spiritual struggles of her own, questioning why God would allow the COVID-19 pandemic to happen, Hunt started a "Good Morning Zoom" bible study that meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. What started out with a handful of friends and teammates has spread across campus and even to "friends from high school living in Colorado, Arizona, Ohio."
Also joining the Zoom bible study has been former Colorado All-American Alexa Smith, part of a team that upset 12th-seeded Baylor two years ago in Waco.
"She was the outside hitter that we scouted," Hunt said. "I didn't know her, except for in passing, and I saw her come up on the Zoom. And I was like, 'How sweet is it that God did this!' We've been encouraging each other for the past three or four weeks. She's been coming on the Zoom praying for me, I'm praying for her. She's an incredible athlete, she just broke her athlete, and we've been able to pray for her. God is moving in the midst of all this stuff."
Initially, Reyna had returned to Waco to continue her post-surgery rehab on the torn ACL she suffered in the fall. But once the Highers/Simpson facility was shut down, "I was kind of on my own," she said.
That changed, though, when a door opened up for her to do rehab with her sister, Victoria, at the Getterman Wellness Center clinic at Baylor Scott & White-Hillcrest in Waco. Victoria had the same injury last fall while playing on Baylor's club volleyball team.
"We're both kind of in the same boat. It's helped my spirits a lot," she said of having her sister as a rehab partner. "It helps so much, not only having access, but having the (physical therapist) coach me, 'Hey, Elena, your leg is shifting when you do squats.' Normally, I just do it by myself, but it's really nice having the PT I'm working with, having her opinion on what I'm doing."
WHAT'S NEXT?
Working part-time with Campus Crates, a moving and storage company started by a Baylor student, Seals was on the front line when the Baylor campus was shut down.
"Typically, we'd go to people's dorms or wherever they live. They would have their stuff already packed up, and we would pick it up and store it over the summer," Seals said. "But this year, with everything being all different, Baylor offered us the chance to help move out everyone's essentials when the campus shut down. We helped doing that and shipping everyone's stuff home and actually helped move people out at the same time."
Now, he's looking forward to the time when he can see the rest of his teammates and Baylor family, "because I've been locked up with my family or my roommate here in Waco."
Van der Mark says she desperately misses volleyball. "I've hit against the wall so many times that my mom is like, 'Hey, can you just leave now?' I really miss my people."
Thomas said the expectations for next year's baseball team are astronomical.
"I think we're only losing three or four people, total," said Thomas, one of the seniors who has committed to returning next year. "The leadership we have coming back, the pitching we have coming back. The people who used to be non-veteran hitters are now kind of veterans, even after a quarter of a season. They've seen what it takes, they've seen what the body can handle. I think the sky's the limit for next year, especially with our arms."
Dawson is one of four softball seniors who committed to returning next year.
"We're going to have 27 players, I think. It's going to be tough to find that nine or 10 that (coach Glenn Moore) is going to want to put out there. Which I think is awesome," she said. "I think our goals and what we want to achieve are going to be through the roof, and I think we're going to have that hunger just from this year being cut short."
Milton, part of new coach Dave Aranda's first football team at Baylor, said he's excited for the chance to see the rest of his teammates and "getting back to normal."
"This next season has a lot of good things coming our way if everybody locks in and buys in to what we have going," he said. "We all understand that every school and every team is going through this same thing. What determines who's going to be the most successful is what team takes this time and uses it to their advantage."
At a time when some internships are being cut, Gifford will do a remote nine-week internship with Fidelity investments based out of Westlake, Texas.
"They're sending us laptops, gear, all kinds of stuff, just to make us feel at home with the Fidelity team," he said. "They're trying to make it as seamless as possible to give us as much of an experience as they can with their company. . . . To be able to continue with my internship while being an athlete on a busy schedule, it's a blessing."
Notthaft, who had just enrolled in January, said he already misses Baylor.
"Baylor is perfect for my studies and my athletic career," he said. "I'm itching to get back there and get back with the guys, with my teammates, with my coaches, and pick up where we left off."
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Back home for the first time in three years, Marieke van der Mark has had to live with "mom's rules" again.
For men's tennis freshman Sebastian Nothhaft, his return to China meant a 14-day quarantine where he couldn't even leave the house for groceries. Softball's Nicky Dawson is back home in Baton Rouge, La., tutoring her two younger siblings.
Soccer junior Elena Reyna stayed in Waco to go through rehabilitation for a torn ACL with her older sister. Mark Milton, a sophomore on the football team, had to become more tech-savvy for the transition to online classes.
"You would think me being this young, I would be better at it, but I'm not the best," Milton said. "Once I got it down, it was pretty easy. You're not physically face-to-face with the person, but the interactions are the same. You still have the same small talk, you get the same amount of work done. We're just not physically face-to-face."
Due to shutdowns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, Baylor's 500-plus student-athletes have had to adapt to the "new normal" of online courses and tutoring, separation anxiety, having the discipline to get into a regular routine and, in some cases, moving back home for the first time in years.
"I don't think this is easy for anyone," said volleyball's Braya Hunt, who hopes to get into Baylor grad school for physical therapy after finishing her undergrad studies this month. "It makes me more thankful for the last 3 ½ years. The things that I really love about getting an education is not studying . . . it's going through it with my classmates that makes it so fun to learn, especially at Baylor with such great professors. There's a huge chunk of that that's missing."
In each case, though, they're making the most of a challenging time in their collegiate careers.
"I'm telling you, those first few weeks were rough," said Jalen Seals, a junior from Fort Worth who competes in the triple jump and long jump for the track & field team. "It was all about just making a schedule and sticking to it. That made it a lot easier to get ahead, just because it's kind of at your own pace, essentially, at that point. Once you get ahead, it really isn't that bad."
THE INITIAL SHOCK
Other that having to transition to online classes and tutoring, the NCAA's decision to cancel the remainder of the winter and spring sports' seasons took far less of a toll on fall sports' athletes like football's Milton, Hunt and van der Mark from the Final Four volleyball squad and soccer's Reyna.
But, with spring sports like baseball and softball off to promising starts, there was an initial shock.
"We were really getting in a nice groove, really bonding. Winning is fun," Dawson said. "When it shut down, I don't think we believed it at first, just because we had heard things from other programs, other conferences. So, when it hit us, we didn't know what to do, because it was just a big unknown, a big question mark."
Seals wasn't with the handful of Baylor athletes in Albuquerque, N.M., when it was announced that the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships and the entire outdoor track season would be shut down. But, the Bears were just a week away from the opening outdoor meet.
"At the time, we were in shock that it was canceled, because people were actually at nationals, waiting for the competition to start," Seals said. "I thought it was a really bad idea because it didn't seem as serious at the time. Now, looking back on it, that was absolutely necessary . . . because you don't want to have thousands of people at a convention center in Albuquerque. It makes sense, we just didn't see it at the time."
The hardest part for Andy Thomas, a senior catcher on the baseball team, was the unknown.
"For Type-A personalities, who operate knowing what's going on every move, that was really hard," Thomas said. "It would have been extremely painful if we wouldn't have gotten (an extra year of) eligibility. For me, and some other people as well, if we did not get drafted, that would have been it. So now, getting that year back, that gives you that confidence again to go out and play another full year and prove what we were capable of doing."
ADAPT AND ADJUST
Once the decisions were made to cancel the rest of the winter and spring sports' seasons, essentially shut down the campus and go online with classes, there was a period of adjusting to the "new normal."
Elijah Gifford, a sophomore hurdler on the track team, said he misses the "change of environment," just walking across campus and "being able to sit in the classroom."
"I like to feed off my peers, feed off the professors," he said. "Being in class, the professors go off-topic and give you little tips and minor details that they usually don't do on these online classes.
"But once I got settled into a good routine, the good part is I've been a lot more productive. I get up, eat breakfast, do my work, take a break to go outside or go for a run, and then come back and finish my work. My day is over at 2 or 3 p.m., and I have the rest of the day just to relax and sit outside and soak up some sun."
The online classes were old hat for Nothhaft, who had a similar routine through high school while he was playing in tennis tournaments around the world.
In the tutoring sessions, he said, "it's not easy to communicate through a computer screen, so it's not just me in an awkward position."
"I'm just thankful I'm not taking courses like calculus or pre-cal," Nothhaft said, "because I think that would have been even more challenging. It's kind of weird at first, especially the first couple of sessions, to get used to speaking through a screen. But eventually, it becomes normal."
In addition to the online classes and tutoring, the student-athletes have been able to stay connected with weekly team meetings, "Sic'em Small Talks" with the Character Formation team and biweekly meetings with the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee.
Van der Mark said she had a routine of going by the Character Formation offices almost every day "just to say 'hi' to them or rant about my classes or whatever was going on with my life." Now, she hangs out with them every Tuesday on the "Sic'em Small Talks" on Zoom.
"We just talk about life," she said. "I think we've talked about Tiger King 20 times now. It's just good to see everyone. It's really good to hear that everyone else is going through the same things that I'm going through. And it doesn't really have an end point to it and no real education to it. It's just, 'Hey, I'm here.'''
As the SAAC Vice President and chairman for the Golden Bruiser Awards Committee, Thomas has helped with the planning for the virtual Golden Bruiser Awards that will be announced starting next Tuesday, May 12.
"It wasn't as much of a struggle as just frustration that we put all this work into something, and then you won't see it through," said Thomas, a senior from Murrietta, Calif. "But, the administration has done a great job making sure we still have that representation and all the acknowledgements that I think the student-athletes deserve. Marcus (Sedberry) and his team have made it a priority to make sure those things still happen."
Seals, a junior from Fort Worth who's in charge of the SAAC campus liaison subcommittee, said his group started "trying to figure out what we wanted to do for next year" once the campus was shut down.
"We wanted to host a community service and food truck event. We had that almost finished right before Baylor shut down," he said. "We're just basically getting the ball rolling now so that we can make sure that next year we can get it executed a whole lot better and a lot faster."
Going through some spiritual struggles of her own, questioning why God would allow the COVID-19 pandemic to happen, Hunt started a "Good Morning Zoom" bible study that meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. What started out with a handful of friends and teammates has spread across campus and even to "friends from high school living in Colorado, Arizona, Ohio."
Also joining the Zoom bible study has been former Colorado All-American Alexa Smith, part of a team that upset 12th-seeded Baylor two years ago in Waco.
"She was the outside hitter that we scouted," Hunt said. "I didn't know her, except for in passing, and I saw her come up on the Zoom. And I was like, 'How sweet is it that God did this!' We've been encouraging each other for the past three or four weeks. She's been coming on the Zoom praying for me, I'm praying for her. She's an incredible athlete, she just broke her athlete, and we've been able to pray for her. God is moving in the midst of all this stuff."
Initially, Reyna had returned to Waco to continue her post-surgery rehab on the torn ACL she suffered in the fall. But once the Highers/Simpson facility was shut down, "I was kind of on my own," she said.
That changed, though, when a door opened up for her to do rehab with her sister, Victoria, at the Getterman Wellness Center clinic at Baylor Scott & White-Hillcrest in Waco. Victoria had the same injury last fall while playing on Baylor's club volleyball team.
"We're both kind of in the same boat. It's helped my spirits a lot," she said of having her sister as a rehab partner. "It helps so much, not only having access, but having the (physical therapist) coach me, 'Hey, Elena, your leg is shifting when you do squats.' Normally, I just do it by myself, but it's really nice having the PT I'm working with, having her opinion on what I'm doing."
WHAT'S NEXT?
Working part-time with Campus Crates, a moving and storage company started by a Baylor student, Seals was on the front line when the Baylor campus was shut down.
"Typically, we'd go to people's dorms or wherever they live. They would have their stuff already packed up, and we would pick it up and store it over the summer," Seals said. "But this year, with everything being all different, Baylor offered us the chance to help move out everyone's essentials when the campus shut down. We helped doing that and shipping everyone's stuff home and actually helped move people out at the same time."
Now, he's looking forward to the time when he can see the rest of his teammates and Baylor family, "because I've been locked up with my family or my roommate here in Waco."
Van der Mark says she desperately misses volleyball. "I've hit against the wall so many times that my mom is like, 'Hey, can you just leave now?' I really miss my people."
Thomas said the expectations for next year's baseball team are astronomical.
"I think we're only losing three or four people, total," said Thomas, one of the seniors who has committed to returning next year. "The leadership we have coming back, the pitching we have coming back. The people who used to be non-veteran hitters are now kind of veterans, even after a quarter of a season. They've seen what it takes, they've seen what the body can handle. I think the sky's the limit for next year, especially with our arms."
Dawson is one of four softball seniors who committed to returning next year.
"We're going to have 27 players, I think. It's going to be tough to find that nine or 10 that (coach Glenn Moore) is going to want to put out there. Which I think is awesome," she said. "I think our goals and what we want to achieve are going to be through the roof, and I think we're going to have that hunger just from this year being cut short."
Milton, part of new coach Dave Aranda's first football team at Baylor, said he's excited for the chance to see the rest of his teammates and "getting back to normal."
"This next season has a lot of good things coming our way if everybody locks in and buys in to what we have going," he said. "We all understand that every school and every team is going through this same thing. What determines who's going to be the most successful is what team takes this time and uses it to their advantage."
At a time when some internships are being cut, Gifford will do a remote nine-week internship with Fidelity investments based out of Westlake, Texas.
"They're sending us laptops, gear, all kinds of stuff, just to make us feel at home with the Fidelity team," he said. "They're trying to make it as seamless as possible to give us as much of an experience as they can with their company. . . . To be able to continue with my internship while being an athlete on a busy schedule, it's a blessing."
Notthaft, who had just enrolled in January, said he already misses Baylor.
"Baylor is perfect for my studies and my athletic career," he said. "I'm itching to get back there and get back with the guys, with my teammates, with my coaches, and pick up where we left off."
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