A year ago Thursday, I watched history unfold from an Oklahoma restaurant.
On March 11, 2020, a friend and I sat down to eat at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Stillwater. On the biggest screen in the building, we watched Isaac Likekele lay in the game-winning shot as the Oklahoma State men’s basketball team defeated Iowa State to open the Big 12 tournament. It was a textbook March Madness moment sports fans were getting ready to see more of in the upcoming NCAA tournament.
The Cowboys stunned the Cyclones in front of 17,606 fans in Kansas City, but the early signs of change had begun. During the game, the Big 12 announced the tournament would be closed to fans starting the next day to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The Pokes were set to play No. 1 Kansas. The Oklahoma Sooners, meanwhile, were to play No. 22 West Virginia.
Still, surely this concept of no fans was just a temporary measure, right?
With the college game over, my friend, an Edmond native, turned his attention to the upcoming Oklahoma City Thunder game against the Utah Jazz. For some reason, the game had not started at its scheduled time.
Every couple of years, some new virus makes headlines for a few weeks, then disappears. Ebola did, so did H1N1. I thought COVID-19 would do the same.
Instead, the news broke Jazz center Rudy Gobert had tested positive, and the Thunder game was canceled. That seemed shocking enough.
My friend and I were still sitting in the restaurant. I absentmindedly scrolled through Twitter on my phone. Then, I saw the most shocking one-sentence tweet I have ever read in my life.
The tweet came from ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski.
“The NBA has suspended the season.”
My jaw has never dropped so fast. All I could do was turn my phone around to show my friend the tweet.
The entire sports world came to a halt over the next couple days. Everything was canceled. College sports, professional sports, even high school sports stopped.
The Edmond Memorial and Oklahoma Christian School boys’ basketball teams, as well as the Edmond North and Deer Creek girls’ basketball teams, were set to play in the state tournament.
It never happened.
A year has now passed since the day the pandemic first became real for American sports fans. Sports have returned, but fan attendance is restricted. High schools and colleges allow a limited number of spectators, while Thunder fans have not been to a game since watching the Thunder and Jazz players be pulled from the court.
The Memorial boys and North girls are getting another shot at state, while the seniors among the OCS boys and Deer Creek girls will never get back the opportunity taken from them.
Wearing masks has become normal. “Social distancing” is part of everyday vocabulary. Over 2.5 million people worldwide have died.
Still, maybe the end is within reach. Every day, more vaccines are administered. A couple weeks ago, an elderly gentleman spoke during an Edmond church service. He said it was his first time worshipping in person since last March. He had gotten his vaccine and finally felt it was safe to return.
On March 11, 2020, our world completely changed. A year later, let’s take this as a lesson not to take “normal” for granted ever again.