Newfield begins practices amid uncertainty

EDITOR’S NOTE: NYSPHSSA has canceled winter state championship and has indefinitely postponed high-risk sports like basketball.

Earlier this year in March, the Newfield boys basketball team was primed for a deep run in the state tournament before COVID-19 canceled the winter championships. Now, nine months have passed since the team’s last game, a Section IV Championship victory, an there is still uncertainty regarding when the Trojans will step on the court again.

Small on-court practices began last weekend for Newfield with six players in the gym at once. All they’re able to do is shoot and dribble, without conditioning workouts. Head coach Chris Bubble believes it’s a positive that the players at least get to use basketballs again.

“It’s going to be very different,” Bubble said. “My hope is that the kids will see it as the potential to just, ‘Hey, let’s get in the gym. Let’s see coach physically. Let’s use some basketballs. Let’s at least start to think about it a little bit.’ I know that’s not ideal, clearly. I know some other schools are doing some different things, but that’s what we have to work with.”

Up to this point, there was minimal physical interaction between the team and coach Bubble, understandably so. He made sure to stay in contact with the players as they pushed through this difficult year.

“I try to stay connected with them, or at least the captains, every couple of weeks or so just to check in because I want to make sure I stay on top of where they are mentally and emotionally,” Bubble said. “I feel like, pretty quickly, they’re going to have to start to physically be thinking about basketball with the potential that we could have a season starting in a month or so.”

Despite the season’s planned start date of Jan. 4 being so close, the recent spike in COVID-19 cases around the country, including Tompkins County, makes proceeding with a high-risk sport such as basketball fairly unlikely. Coaching with that uncertainty looming is a significant challenge.

“That’s the hardest part, talking to them about basketball and trying to keep them engaged mentally,” Bubble said. “We don’t make a lot of commitments right now, just because of the way we ended last year. In 15 years of coaching basketball, that was the hardest thing I ever had to do. … So, I don’t want to get their hopes up and their expectations up to have to then abruptly break the news that, ‘Sorry, that’s not going to happen.’”

Newfield is primed for another successful season if it does indeed happen. The Trojans are led by senior captain Jacob Humble, who was a captain last year and has been on the varsity squad since his freshman year, and Jalen Hardison, a sophomore standout who has been a starter since eighth-grade.

“That’s the one thing that I keep thinking about is the potential passing of the torch from Josh [Wood], LaRon [Boykin], Daejahd [Leckey] to guys like Jacob and Jalen,” Bubble said. “Jacob has been a varsity player now since ninth grade, so this is like the culmination of his basketball career at Newfield. He and Jalen have the stage to show what they have, like, ‘The team is ours now. Let’s show everyone what we’ve got.’ The potential for that not to happen, that could be devastating.”

If Humble and Hardison do get to show what they’re made of this year, it won’t be in front of a live crowd. The Interscholastic Athletic Conference recently decided to not have fans in attendance for any indoor winter sports. Newfield’s fans are notoriously supportive of the basketball teams, which will present a unique challenge for the upcoming season.

“There are games we’ve played where we rely on the crowd,” Bubble said. “We don’t come out with the right intensity or the right energy, we come out flat at halftime, or we come out flat right from the jump, and we need a little bit of a spark, and it sometimes can come from that big crowd. To not have that I think will be drastically different and a shift coachingwise that we need to account for.”

At the end of the day, the season has not yet been canceled or delayed, so these practices could pay dividends in the long run if things do work out.

“I think it’ll be exciting for all of the kids that will be there,” Bubble said. “Regardless of what’s happening, it’s important that the kids understand that we do have the potential to play a game one month from now. Anytime there’s hope and optimism, then that’s a good thing. But we also want to be realistic about it. So, it’ll be exciting just to see the ones that are there and for the kids also to see each other, the ones who don’t get to see each other in school.”

Moving forward, not being able to pick up where the 2019-20 team left off would be devastating for the returning Newfield players. For the time being, sharing the court with some teammates again will help alleviate some of that overwhelming uncertainty.