Bearing the brunt of season shutdown
High school seniors, like Valparaiso’s Civanich, most affected by sports shutdown. ‘Everybody else has a get-out-of-jail-free card.’
High school seniors, like 2019 Post-Tribune Golfer of the Year Mark Civanich, of Valparaiso, are among the most affected by the cancellation of the spring season. “Everybody else has a get-outof-jail-free card.”
Valparaiso golfer Mark Civanich has processed the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on high school seniors and concluded the result is disproportionately unfair for them.
This is not news. But the way Civanich distills the unprecedented end of his Valparaiso career is worthy of a slogan.
There is no tomorrow for Civanich and other seniors. Only whatever next year brings. The coronavirus is zero-tolerance.
“Everybody else has a getout-of-jail-free card,” he said. “Juniors return for another year. College seniors can come back for another year if they want to compete. It sucks for us. It’s something we can’t control.”
There are two types of senior athletes.
There are those who wanted to finish their spring season playing hard and enjoying it before moving on to the next phase of their life.
And there are those, like Civanich, who had something to prove.
The 2019 Post-Tribune Golfer of the Year, Civanich was playing to find a spot on a college team.
After hitting balls four or five times a week at Right Approach Performance in Valparaiso during the winter, Civanich was anxious to play. He knew he was better.
He was courted by IUPUI last year after he finished tied for 21st at the state meet, and Civanich thought he had a spot on the team before the program backed off without explanation. That burned him up a little. “I wanted to get off to a hot start and show some schools what they were missing,” he said.
Civanich took the old-school approach to hone his game.
He played in a few summer tournaments, but Civanich wasn’t interested in the summer grind that takes some players all over the Midwest. That took the joy out of the game for him.
A college golf opportunity was going to have to be earned during the season. Then that season was taken away when the Indiana High School Athletic Association canceled spring sports on April 2.
“It was disappointing,” he said of not being able to play. “I had put a lot of work in and made some huge improvements to my game.”
Civanich still plans to play college golf. He’s not sure where or how. Trine, a Division III program in Angola, has offered him a spot on the team.
It’s a possibility.
Civanich hasn’t been to Trine, though. He wants to make a trip there when the shutdown is lifted and make sure it’s the same place he’s seen on video.
“I just need to walk around campus and see what it’s like,” he said.
The upside to the shutdown is that Civanich has an extended summer.
His days are filled with more golf than ever because it’s one of the few activities that can be done safely with social distancing.
He typically gets up around 10 a.m., does schoolwork for a few hours and then heads to the course. When he’s done with golf and dinner, it’s time for video games.
A good student who plans to major in engineering, Civanich said it’s “weird because I feel like school is almost a second priority for me.”
Yes, it’s repetitive, but there isn’t a lot of flexibility these days.
Civanich called the shutdown “an excuse to be lazy.”
He’s not wrong.
“You can’t go to the gym, work out and get stronger,” he said.
Civanich has two events penciled into his golf calendar this summer.
He is going to play in the Northern Amateur at Sand Creek Country Club in July and the Indiana Amateur.
He has his fingers crossed that the coronavirus restrictions will start to ease up after May.
Until that happens, Civanich is going to stick to the same routine.
Like everybody else, he has no other options, and he’s grateful that he at least still has golf.
Almost every other sport is off-limits.
“I probably haven’t felt the quarantine as much as other people because I can still get out and play whenever I want,” he said.