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Gary’s Hoop Scoops: Shocking End

This feels different today, writing about the last week. Now I’m about to revisit the pain and shock of the last week as reality set in very quickly five days ago. I, like many of you, were looking forward to seeing our UH Rainbow Warriors play in the Big West Tournament. I wrote last week how I thought the matchup vs UC Davis was a good one for us. Like every March, I was waiting for the joy of winning one game, hopefully more. I wondered if I’d feel that joy, or the pain of having the season ending abruptly, with a loss on the court.  Key words: “on the court.” I’ve seen both with the ‘Bows over the year, so I was, and still am, in a state of disbelief. I also have feelings of anger and frustration. I am still stunned that the team, and we as fans, for the first time ever, don’t get that experience this year. Mixed emotions, to say the least.

I feel so terrible for the two seniors, Eddie Stansberry and Zigmars Raimo. A few days ago, “Steady” Eddie said, “I didn’t want to have my last game be the last game.” Think about that. How can you not hurt for the whole team, and especially the two seniors?

Rainbow Wahine Coach Laura Beeman last week told me, “If we lose in the court, then there’s some closure. This way, there wasn’t any, and it hurts.” I talked to several UH coaches last week, and they all said the same thing. Telling the team was the hardest part. I guess part of why that was hard is it was the right thing to do. The games couldn’t go on. It’s one thing to see they’d play the games without fans there, but to cancel basically the entire sports world feels like a bad dream. But it is the reality.

I never thought that, two months ago, when reading about some virus in China, that the world would be forever changed by this. Hopefully sports will return soon. Hopefully, normalcy will return soon.

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