The Texas club lacrosse team should have been riding a high going into practice March 12. Five days earlier, the Longhorns crushed the Oklahoma Sooners in a 25-6 win, cruising to a 5–1 record.
That Thursday at Caven-Clark Field would be their last practice of the 2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now a few months away from a potential 2021 season, the lacrosse team must go through a new set of obstacles to compete, head coach Seth Bokmeyer said.
“Everybody was very disappointed because we thought it was gonna be a pretty special year on the field,” Bokmeyer said. “I guess the worst part for me was we never got closure, we never got to say goodbye because all the classes went online, guys started going home. … That was probably the worst part just off the field — not being able to get together one last time.”
Things were falling into place for the team at the beginning of the 2020 season. The Longhorns made the move into the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse Conference and were sitting at the top of the standings in mid-March. Texas attackman Rowan Hart was the number one scorer in the Men's Collegiate Lacrosse Association with 32 goals in six games.
Following the victory over the Sooners, Texas was set to play Colorado State for Senior Day, but Bokmeyer received a text from the Rams’ head coach March 10 saying his team would not be traveling due to the growing gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Some teams started canceling, and then from that point on, every practice was like, ‘This can be the last practice’ or ‘This could be the last game of the season.’ So, that's kind of where it started dawning on all of us that the season might be canceled early,” said Ryan Thompson, junior long stick midfielder and Texas lacrosse’s vice president.
The Longhorns met two days later for what would be their last practice. The team played touch football, shot around and talked about the COVID-19 pandemic. Garrett McCullough, who felt like his senior season would be a “revenge tour” after ending the previous one with a championship loss, said the practice was full of mixed emotions.
“I remember standing with one of my close friends … we were the last ones to leave that field that day, and he and I came in as freshmen and we’ve been captains and involved in other leadership on the team,” McCullough said. “Just standing there, it was a weird feeling of not knowing. We thought it was the last time we'd ever step foot on a lacrosse field competitively.”
Though McCullough is able to return to the team for one more season because of his master’s program, it is uncertain whether the 2021 season will happen. The pandemic also created a new set of financial issues for the team. The lacrosse team receives less than 5% of its funding from the University. The Longhorn Shootout, a youth and high school tournament that brings in the bulk of the team’s money, is canceled because of the pandemic. Bokmeyer said motivated alumni and parents have helped ease the funding loss, and the team is still optimistic about the season.
The team is hosting socially distanced practices where players are grouped by position and practice on one side of the field. To accommodate its 54-man roster, the team moved from the Caven-Clark Field to the Berry M. Whitaker Sports Complex and have hourly blocks: Four groups of players come from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. and then another from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Bokmeyer and Thompson said that the University’s club sports office has been responsive and helpful in answering their questions. The fate of the season has not been decided yet because of the evolving situation, Bokmeyer said, but he and his players have kept their hopes and high.
“I think the expectation is to pick up where we left off,” McCullough said. “We've got a lot of talent coming back … and I would say the freshmen coming in have great talent. … There's a lot of hoops we have to jump through between now and the season starting, but (the) expectation (is to) definitely go out to that conference championship again.”
