Playing Through Covid: "What A Blast We Had"

A basketball season unlike any other concludes with a champion and a touch of grace

A little before 9 p.m. Friday night, Stevenson High School assistant coach Paul Swan grabbed the microphone.

He struggled to speak but the words eventually came out.

“My heart is broken the season is over. But what a blast we had,” Swan said.

Minutes before, on the court at Woodlawn Middle School in Long Grove, IL, his Stevenson Patriots boys basketball team had been beaten by Libertyville High School 53-43 in the conference’s first ever North Suburban tournament championship game.

With no state tournament, the conference elected to adopt its own ‘March Madness’ format and play a conference tournament.

Post-game inside the quaint gymnasium at Woodlawn presented the latest sequence of events in a year when thousands, or more likely millions, of similar socially awkward scenes involving gatherings of people unfolded throughout the country.

What’s appropriate? What’s not? Should I talk to that person? Can they hear me through the mask? Should we celebrate? How do we celebrate?

Maybe we should just leave the building as quickly as possible? Where do we go? Is the bus here yet? Did we take the bus or did we drive ourselves?

If I have to fiddle with this darn mask one more time…

Because Friday was the final game of the Patriots season, Coach Swan (‘Swannie’) had to give the end-of-season farewell speech (Stevenson head coach Pat Ambrose missed the game for personal reasons). It was likely the last time this year’s group of players, coaches and parents would be together in the same room.

“We are so proud of these players. They’ve done so much,” Swan said, his voice trembling with emotion.

In the corner of the gym, Libertyville coach Bryan Zyrkowski watched Swan speak. His players had cleared out. There was no on-court celebration for their NSC title win but then again, the Wildcats season was not over. They had one final game Saturday against St. Viator.

“It’s a little different. This year under the circumstances the only state tournament we had was the conference tournament,” Zyrkowski said.

The whole thing Friday night was charmingly weird to witness. But in March 2021, charmingly weird is not altogether uncommon.

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While the victorious Wildcats waited in the hallway, I conversed with another Stevenson assistant.

During his post-game speech, Swan mentioned how Chandler Levingston-Simon, a 2012 Stevenson graduate turned assistant coach, was leaving town the next morning.

Little Rock, Arkansas was Levingston-Simon’s destination. Wheels up, 6 a.m.

“I’m driving the whole way,” he said.

The reason for Levingston’s almost-700-mile journey south?

To chase his professional basketball dream.

Little Rock is the home of the Lightning, team in a start up league called simply enough, The Basketball League.

On its website, TBL says this:

The Basketball League (TBL) is dedicated to delivering a World Class Professional Basketball experience to our community, our fans, and business partners:

Provide communities with a professional basketball team that gives an affordable/quality family entertainment experience.

Provide players with educational opportunities to learn from nationally acclaimed life skills classes for financial literacy, health and wellness, nutrition, preventative medicine and sports biomechanics.

Offer support and encouragement to local communities through engagement in school and group appearances, youth camps, clinics and non-profit organizations.

Afford basketball players the opportunity to make a living playing the game they love, in America.

Procure local individuals or groups an opportunity to own a professional sports business. A relatively low cost barrier to entry, a proven game plan to success, with a return on their investment while positively impacting their region.

Sounds like a terrific opportunity for a young man who wants to make basketball his profession.

“The league is similar to what I’d be doing here; community stuff, not just on the court, they want good people and the hope is to make it in that league and then go on to the next level,” Levingston-Simon said, who’s father Cliff, played for the Chicago Bulls during a 13-year NBA career. “A spring board to a lot of things.”

The next thing began for Levingston-Simon pre-dawn Saturday.

Before then, he said good-bye to his players, complimenting them on how they handled circumstances no high school team had ever deal with.

“That is a resilient group, no matter what we threw at them,” Levingston-Simon said. “Contact days on short notice, we got that going. and installed things quickly.

“They just handled it in every way possible.”

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While talking with Swan and Levingston-Simon, the Wildcats waited (Yes, there was a bus. It waited too).

When I found them, they were in good spirits. Three of their players, seniors Blake Ellingson, Marc Michelotti and junior Chase Bonder were happy to answer questions about their unprecedented accomplishment as NSC tourney champs.

“I feel like I’m on top of the world right now,” Michelotti said.

“Feels unbelievable,” Ellingson said. “First ever and last ever (conference tournament).”

We can only hope.

On this night, Libertyville was the better team. The Wildcats opened up a close game after three quarters (they led 37-34 at the end of the third) with 7-2 run over the first half of the fourth quarter. Libertyville made their free throws down the stretch and Stevenson could not get enough possessions back to have a shot at erasing the deficit.

The crowd was as spirited as less than 50 people could be. It felt as close to a championship game as permissible in this climate of mitigations and protocols (groans about the officiating were frequent and justifiable).

I couldn’t help but ask the champion Wildcat players if it was all worth it.

“I was talking to the guys at halftime and we don’t want to end this game with any regrets I don’t want to go home on the bus with any regrets. I want to go home happy,” Michelotti said.

Said Ellingson: “With everyone getting tested weekly (Community District 128, that includes Libertyville High School, tests its in-season athletes once a week) if one person tests positive we are done for two weeks and could trace to the other team so it could mess up other teams. We had to make sacrifices. It was tough on us but worth it.”

Then Bonder concluded the interview with this insightful comment.

“We are role models to other sports that this can be done, so other sports can be played,” Bonder said.

I thought about asking Bonder if he was interested in running for governor in 2022 but he’d probably prefer to graduate high school and go to college.

I mean, has anyone in Springfield said anything that mature and rational in the past 12 months?

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The below photo was sent to me by a friend over the weekend.

It’s from the state basketball tournament in Nebraska, held this past weekend.

They managed to pull it off with crowds present.

A coaching friend sent a statistic about his school:

Around 100 plus days of contact tracing including 24 practices and 16 games.

No shutdowns, no positive tests.

Those stats apply to the overwhelming majority of high school teams throughout the abbreviated basketball season.

Sure, there were some hiccups. In fact, Libertyville got into the game against Stevenson because Mundelein, its semifinal opponent, had to forfeit due to contact tracing tied to a previous game. So yes, the season was not clean of Covid-related issues.

But players, coaches and administrators deserve a lot of credit for making it work.

And Bonder is absolutely right. It can be done.

Friday night, it was done with dignity and a champion was crowned.

I just miss the loud student sections, the fighting for a seat near the court, the celebrating the champion part.

Let’s do it next time. And save the masks for Halloween.