After coming back from celebrating Christmas with their families, the Covenant Women's Basketball Team was poised to build off of their solid 6-3 start to the season. The Scots had two monstrous wins earlier in the season over Wesleyan College and Agnes Scott College in which both games ended with 45+ point victories. The women's team looked forward to their two matchups with Birmingham Southern on December 30th and Randolph (Lynchburg, VA.) on New Year's Day.
However, plans quickly unraveled, as some members of the team fell ill to COVID-19. As a precaution, the game on the 30th was cancelled due to Birmingham Southern's own outbreak. Covenant's game was still scheduled to occur on January 1st against Randolph in Lynchburg, VA. However, after making it all the way up to Lynchburg, more team members fell ill.
Unfortunately, the game against Randolph was cancelled. Ruthie Moore (Junior) was one of the members of the basketball team that caught the virus while the team was in Virginia. She described the whole debacle as an unfortunate situation that left all but four of the women on the team testing positive for the illness. However, the team's spirits are still high, as the team is back to playing. They played their first game in over a month on January
12th.
Despite the team being back in good health, there have still been challenges that have been imposed on the team. First off, Moore and much of the team experienced general fatigue and energy loss from their stint with COVID, and shaking that off has proven to be difficult. Second, while the Scots are looking forward to conference play, Moore said that some of the focus she was hoping to have coming into those games was understandably shaken by the scope of the illness on herself and the team. Moore still feels that they are knocking off some of the rust that they experienced after being forced to spend over a week not practicing together, having not played a game for over a month.
While postponements continue (due to other teams' positive cases), Moore understands the opportunity that the team has to have more high intensity practices that can work them back towards being in better game shape. However, there were also lessons to be learned from this unfortunate experience.
While the team's COVID outbreak certainly blew up some plans after their Christmas break, Moore contended that it taught the team how to deal with adversity, knowing that bumpy roads and inconsistencies should be expected during the COVID era. This mindset keeps the team steady, which prevents them from getting too high or too low from one
game to another.
As the women's basketball team continues to trend towards their pre-covid level of play again, many Scots fans are hoping that the rest of their season is free of bumpy roads as the Covenant Scots look to contend in USA South Conference play.