One Year Later
With sports paused, life altered, athletes make do, make new
Parker Tuomie and his Minnesota State hockey team were thriving last season, pursuing the program’s first NCAA Tournament victory with a fervor that suggested a bigger goal than that.
As the winter transpired, news from Tuomie’s father coaching overseas about the virus outbreak portended a major roadblock lurking further down the path. First, the top-tier league in Tuomie’s native Germany had banned postgame handshake lines. Then, the season was canceled.
“I knew that we weren’t far away from that possibility,” Tuomie said, “but it did happen quicker than I thought it would.”
March 12, 2020, that tippingpoint day of dread for so many as the dark clouds of COVID-19 drifted in, was the end of the run for the second-ranked Mavericks
and their 31-5-2 record. The plug was pulled on the rest of the WCHA playoffs, then hours later on the entire NCAA Tournament. Tuomie and his teammates gathered for goodbyes to their national championship chase — and one another.
“A lot of tears were flowing. It was just a very emotional day,” said Tuomie, one of seven seniors on the 2019-20 squad. “Every year you have a feeling that you can do it, but right from the get-go we had that feeling that this was our year and we were going to be the first to do it.”
Life often strays from the preferred script, as much of the world was reminded by the pandemic.
By summertime, with opportunities to play professionally in the U.S. drying up, Tuomie was back in Germany. He signed with Eisbären Berlin in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga, where his dad is the head coach of a different team. This was a goal of his all along, not some last-ditch idea, but the way it unfolded wasn’t ideal.
What a time he had on American ice, though. Three years of junior hockey. Four seasons at Minnesota State, with a 114-36-9 career record. Being part of the WCHA, the same storied league his dad once skated in for St. Cloud State and Wisconsin. Playing in front of relatives of his Minnesota native father, Tray Tuomie, who married a German while playing there and stayed to raise a family.
Marc Michaelis became one of Parker Tuomie’s close pals, a fellow German and four-year roommate in that class of Mavericks seniors last year who recently made his NHL debut with Vancouver. Tuomie was returning home around 4 a.m. from a road trip with his team, so he took advantage of the time difference and turned on the Canucks game live. He fell asleep on the couch after the first period and caught up to the action with his friend in the morning.
Maybe next month Tuomie, Michaelis and the others who used to wear the purple and gold will be able to tune in to the NCAA Frozen Four and cheer for the Mavericks from afar. They’re currently ranked third, poised again for a postseason run. Perhaps there’ll be a twinge of envy or regret, but mostly they’ll feel pride in the program they left behind and a sense of identity as the class that got stonewalled by a pandemic.
“I got a chance to see how special it can be to be around a group of guys for four years and really make those friendships and those bonds that will last forever,” Tuomie said.
“IN THE MOMENT” >> As the Farmington Tigers girls basketball team prepared last year for the program’s first appearance in the Minnesota state high school tournament, head coach Liz Carpentier passed out a journal to each of her players. Not for game-planning, just for memory-keeping.
The good-luck cards from the kindergarteners. The pep fest. The team restaurant outings. The police car-and-fire truck escort out of town, on the way to the quarterfinal game. The getout-of-school early excuse.
“I really wanted them to be in the moment,” Carpentier said, “just so they could enjoy the week and look back on it.”
After fighting through a couple of significant injuries to important players earlier in the season, the Tigers were crushing it as the No. 2 seed in the Class 4A bracket. They cruised to victory in the semifinals on March 12 and into the title game against Hopkins, which boasted a 62-game winning streak and UConnbound guard Paige Bueckers.
The sports world was swiftly shutting down amid the COVID-19 outbreak, and an attendance limit had been set for the finals for March 14. Still, Carpentier figured they’d be able to finish the tournament. Between celebrating the feat, handling ticket logistics and strategizing for the championship, she didn’t have time to dwell on this worst-case scenario.
The cancellation announcement came before practice on March 13. That end-of-season speech Carpentier had rehearsed in her head was moved up a day. As the girls gathered as an official team one last time, they made a quintessential stop at Dairy Queen before rewatching the semifinal game at a teammate’s house.
One year later, the Tigers are undefeated. Ultimately beaten by an invisible opponent in 2020, they’re determined to avoid going down on the court in 2021 — and grateful for each moment together in this tenuous season. A couple of positive cases could bring their games to another halt.
The five seniors from last season’s team, four of whom are playing NCAA sports, are among their biggest fans. Carpentier will always remember the day she had to tell them they were done playing.
“I told them, ‘You’re going to go through a lot tougher things in life than not getting to play a basketball game,’ but it meant a lot to them,” Carpentier said. “I think they look back on it now and say: ‘That was the best week of our life. That was the greatest.’”
TIME TO MOVE ON >> As far back as grade school, Quinn Alo had his heart set on playing football for North Dakota State. He grew up two hours southwest of Fargo in tiny LaMoure, North Dakota, where passion for the Bison spiked in 2011 when they began a run of eight FCS championships in nine years.
Alo could have played at North Dakota on a scholarship. Instead, he accepted a preferred walk-on spot from North Dakota State in 2016. Part of the recruiting pitch was that if he stuck it out to become a fifth-year senior — most players redshirt at NDSU — he would get to experience the 2020 season opener at Pac-12 power Oregon.
As a backup offensive lineman and special teams player with his degree in hand, he knew football was about over for him. So he planned to get married on Aug. 1, play his last year and move on with life. The virus didn’t yield to anybody’s plans, though.
Alo’s wedding was held. The season wasn’t, save for an Oct. 3 game NDSU hurriedly scheduled against Central Arkansas. Missing out on that game against Oregon, fresh off a Rose Bowl victory, stung the most.
Returning for the Bison’s eight-game spring season was not an option, given the amount of financial and emotional support he’d had from his now-wife, Kendra, a certified nursing assistant. It was time for Alo to give some of that back to her, so he went to work in sales while finishing his master’s degree in business administration and hunting for a house with his wife.
They attended the Bison’s opener against Youngstown State on Feb. 21 and sat with the parents of two of his old teammates and groomsmen. There were no regrets for Alo, no longing to be on the field, only missing being with his football friends.
“I was lucky to spend four years there and met my wife, met my groomsmen and got a great job,” Alo said. “We’re still living in Fargo, so we’ll be going to Bison games for years to come.”
“WAS THIS ALL WORTH IT?”
>> Kyle Briggs was a lateblooming wrestler, finally making his mark on the mat for the long-strong program at Wartburg College.
The NCAA Division III championships in 2020 were even scheduled for his hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was 26-2 with 12 pins, seeded No. 2 at 174 pounds and even more motivated by a 5-4 defeat in the 2019 semifinals.
“This is my time to win,” Briggs recalled thinking to himself. “In 2020, it was a totally different attitude shift. It wasn’t like I was going to try to put myself in the best position. It was more like, ‘This is mine to lose now.’”
On March 12, after lunch with his family at home before joining teammates for an afternoon workout at the arena, the NCAA canceled its championships as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19 — less than 24 hours before the wrestling competition was supposed to start.