(crowd noise)
And the lead and the championship for
Newell-Fonda!
That is a comeback for the ages.
What a game!
♪♪
As the lights went down on the 2020 Iowa
Girls Basketball season, nobody had any idea what
lay ahead.
♪♪
Coronavirus infections have passed the half
million mark worldwide.
3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits
in the last week alone.
Open up your trunk.
Thank you.
With much of the country in quarantine, Iowans came
to terms with a global pandemic.
♪♪
Decision makers were faced with difficult
choices, including the Executive Director of the
Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union,
Jean Berger.
Jean Berger: Remember, this is all new.
We have no playbook.
You're just operating sort of in this vacuum.
Schools are shut down.
Our sports are shut down.
Our kids are not working with coaches.
We made the decision not to have any of our spring
sports.
♪♪
Paul Yeager: When coach had to call that
meeting and say, sorry ladies, there's no season,
what was your emotion?
Abbey Klostermann: I look back on it now and I just
wish that I spent like five more minutes on the
field, like just taking it all in, like taking deep
breaths, like wow, this is my last time.
I definitely wish that I had just one more moment,
like on the field with my best friends.
♪♪
Bridget Stober: The season kept getting
pushed back and delayed.
Pitchers and catchers knew that we couldn't be taking
this time off.
So we all found like open fields somewhere where we
could go to pitch together and catch together.
By summer 2020, COVID-19 was a fact of life.
The IGHSAU chose to let each district decide for
themselves whether or not to participate in summer
sports.
Jean Berger: A softball coach said, just tell us
what we need to do and we'll do it.
We'll do anything you want us to do so we can play.
Uh, and they did.
♪♪
We are on the way to a beautiful evening in
Fort Dodge --
Makenzie Bloker: The state
championship is the number one goal when you're in a
sport.
It's everyone's goal.
And so we kind of kept that in the back of our
mind.
Cheyenne Behrends, she's a 507 hitter.
Take our temperature before each practice,
before each game.
(crowd noise)
Home run!
Cheyenne Behrends: We had to sanitize all of our
equipment.
We had our own bats and our own helmets.
And during games we had to take the ball into the
dugout with us instead of leaving it at the
pitcher's mound.
Thea Banning: We weren't able to stay in the dorms.
If it would have been a regular season we would
have stayed in the dorms there.
And so we drove back every day, like two and a half
hours every day, twice.
♪♪
Jean Berger: We learned so much.
So we took that into our fall championships and
into volleyball especially.
Malea Neuroth: Keep a safe distance away.
Always sanitizing, sanitize the balls,
sanitize hands, not sharing really any
equipment at all.
Madelyn Norton: With all the crazy going on in the
world, like we knew we had volleyball to always just
play and rely on that.
So we wanted to take advantage of it and that's
what we were going to do.
We were just going to play, compete and have
fun.
♪♪
McKenna Scheib: If this is what we have to
do, especially if you're like the seniors like
Phyona and I, this is our last chance to play and
because of these circumstances, like we're
just going to do what we have to do.
♪♪
The state championship for Clarksville!
Fifth time's a charm!
I think it is really important to note that we
got cut short of some games and some practices.
We had to work on our own and do our own thing on
our own to keep at it and and to still improve every single day.
♪♪
(crowd cheering)
As the seasons changed, so
did case counts.
(buzzer sounds)
With winter approaching, Iowans
were reminded that nothing in 2020, least of all a
schedule, is guaranteed.
Chris Guess: When you get the news that there has
been a stoppage and we're going virtual before we
were able to play our first game, then you have
another stoppage for the holiday break.
And we get shut down with COVID for 10 days.
Sheri Guess: Having to watch other teams play,
there's a perspective that you don't get by playing
every night.
And so they're glad at the opportunity to play, even
if it's to practice for one night.
And so they're not taking anything for granted at
this point.
♪♪
Jean Berger: That research on mental health,
that really struck a chord with me about what kids
had been giving up.
♪♪
Losing something that you're that
passionate about affects a lot.
♪♪
Sierra Vance: Honestly for me I kind of
just didn't think about that we were in a
pandemic, I was just focused in the moment
because you're never going to get that back.
So I didn't want to hold back any of the energy or
any of that.
♪♪
The best part of it was just being able to
go out there and compete and forget about what was
all going on around us.
We were all just like banding together to
support each other.
Just being able to get out of the house and like see
sports.
That smile says it all!
♪♪
Everyone just seemed so excited.
♪♪