This week in Sports World has to be better than last week, seven days of season cancellations in colleges and sputtering re-openings in the pros. Plus, last week was one of heartache after the death of an unsung hero in Rhode Island sports medicine.
In college sports, news went from bad to worse. On Wednesday, Stanford University, the fourth richest in America with an endowment of $27.7 billion, eliminated 11 sports to save $70 million over three years. The school said it could no longer afford 36 varsity programs in the current pandemic atmosphere. That’s Stanford!
You might recall that at the end of May Brown slashed 11 varsity sports and planned to use the $500,000 savings to enhance the competitiveness of the remaining programs. The backlash from the men’s track team was so intense that Brown restored cross-country and indoor and outdoor track within two weeks. But that case is not closed. In June, Brown athletes retained the prominent Chicago lawyer Jeffrey Kessler to press their cause, and lawyers for Public Justice and the ACLU of Rhode Island sued Brown for alleged violations of terms of the 1998 settlement in its famous Title IX gender discrimination case.
Also, on Wednesday the Ivy League became the first Division I conference to cancel all fall sports. The Harvard-Yale football game, The Game, will take a sabbatical in 2020. Ivy sports might resume Jan. 1.
On Thursday, the Big Ten announced it would play conference games only. On Friday, the Pac-12 followed. The fallout? Longstanding rivalries like Notre Dame-USC will be suspended for a season. The Fighting Irish and Trojans have played every year since 1926 except for the 1943-45 World War II years. The other three Power 5 conferences – Big 12, SEC and ACC – have indicated they will wait until the end of July to decide the fate of fall sports. Why? Get it over with now and plan for the future. Better yet, schedule fall sports for next spring. Imagine the national championship football game on Memorial Day?
On Friday, the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) canceled all conference competition this fall. Members Williams and Bowdoin took the lead last month when they announced the cancellation of all fall sports.
College sports make little sense this year, not with the reduction of students on campus, on-line instruction and social distancing guidelines during this coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.
Pro sports make little sense as well. The NBA is preparing to resume its season in Orlando. That’s Orlando, Florida. FLORIDA! The Sunshine State set a national record of 15,000 new cases on Sunday, more than New York in its darkest days last spring. Miami is restoring a 10 p.m. curfew. Beaches are closed. Bars and inside dining are closed again. And the NBA is playing basketball there?
Major League Baseball is another exercise in folly. Training camps opened and closed. Players are testing positive almost daily. After bitter negotiations the players union and management agreed to a 60-game schedule, not even half a regular season. And games would probably be played in empty ball parks. To what end?
Hockey has moved north across the border to Toronto and Edmonton and will resume Aug. 1. The goal is a four-team tournament in late September or early October for the Stanley Cup. No spectators allowed. Wonderful. As an aside, in 1919 the hockey season ended early because of the Spanish Flu pandemic. No Stanley Cup. And the game survived.
NFL training camps are scheduled to open this month and the season to start Sept. 10. We’ll see about that.
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Condolences to the family of Jacqueline D. (Staples) Finn, a three-sport athlete at Woonsocket High School four decades ago and a superb physical therapist. She died July 7 after a lengthy and gutsy struggle with metastatic breast cancer. She had turned 57 in May.
Jacqui was an extraordinary woman. Smart, inquisitive, perceptive, persuasive, compassionate, direct. She was a physical therapist and clinical manager at Healy Physical Therapy in East Providence for 14 years until the spread of cancer forced her to stop working about 10 months ago. She was also a certified athletic trainer and a certified manual therapist during her 34 years in health care.
I got to know Jacqui in 2016 as she helped me prepare for rotator cuff surgery on my right shoulder. She wanted me to preserve the little strength that remained after 60 years of baseball, football, tennis, tumbles and falls left two large tears. She was so concerned for my health in the next 10 years that when the surgeon first declined to operate because of the size of the tears, she urged me to get a second opinion. When he changed his mind, she was more thrilled than I was.
Jacqui managed my post-op rehab, always urging caution as I gradually increased the weights I lifted, tempted to exceed her suggested maximum limit. I will always hear her voice. “Don’t do it, Mike. Do not do it!”
Jaqui treated competitive athletes, weekend warriors and non-athletes with the same sensitivity because she could identify with each. She played tennis, basketball and softball at Woonsocket High from 1977 to 1981 and was All-State First Team in tennis. She was also elected to the National Honor Society. She played tennis at Northeastern, studied physical therapy and graduated cum laude. She was smart enough to be admitted to several top medical schools but could not afford the cost. Several years later, Harvard called and offered her a full scholarship, but by then she was married, had a young family and was established as a therapist. She declined. When I was her patient, I sensed she knew as much as my doctors, but she always respected their directives.
Jacqui’s funeral was Saturday. She leaves her husband George, the director of athletics and recreation for Barrington schools; her sons Matthew and Christopher, and three brothers.
