I had debated whether I should add to the pessimistic tones of the recent content here, because this community has been stressed so much this year. But I decided though that our situation may be interesting to some.
My son is at Georgia College in Milledgeville, a D2 school with around 7,000 students and a very solid baseball tradition. I played there 30 something years ago. Before the shutdown, the team started this spring with a 13-2 record, national rankings, and high expectations for a memorable year.
The HC resigned early in the summer, which probably would have happened with or without COVID. The short story is that there has not been a HC since July, and no coaches at all for several months. The school admin / athletic department has tremendously mishandled the situation. There has been little to no useful communication to the players. The players have been back to campus for about 2 months. Classes are a mix of in person and virtual. The team has not been allowed to have any kind of group or organized activities, until last week. Players are organizing and leading workouts now. Up until last week they had no access to the field, locker room, weight room, etc. The AD has most recently said that coaches would be hired this month, after previously only saying things like coaches would be in place when the time was right.
Crazy stuff. It is like they aren't sure if they will play this spring or not, and in the back of my mind I've thought several times "Oh heck, your alma mater is going to do away with baseball".
The son is strongly considering moving on from baseball, and focusing on finishing his undergrad and getting ready for grad school. After a red-shirt year and a COVID year, he has more eligibility than school left. He will be fine, and hopefully his mom will be too, but we sure did not expect to have to watch his baseball passion be drained from him.
As has been said in other places here, I know schools are dealing with unchartered waters and finances have got to be upside down in a lot of places. Still our school should have done way better dealing with this related to the baseball program. At worst, they have strung along 40 - 50 baseball players so as to get their tuition for another semester or two. I hope that is not the case. I hope they have a season this spring. It would be quite a story if they competed on a national level (and I think they have talent to do so) after what has gone on this year.
