Franklin Pierce student-athletes come to grips with shortened spring season

On March 3, Franklin Pierce senior Amelia Mamone was celebrating a 4-3 walk-off win with her teammates in Myrtle Beach. She had no idea that she had just pitched her final game for the Ravens softball team. 

Nine days later, the NE-10 conference announced that the rest of the spring season for all sports would be put on hold due to the spread of COVID-19. The postponement would later become a cancellation, for both the conference and the NCAA itself. The fields that were supposed to host games through April and May will now sit unused until August. 

(Photo: Franklin Pierce University)

For all FPU athletes, it was a nasty surprise that ended the spring season before it started.

“I think our team was very good this year,” Mamone said. “One of the best Franklin Pierce has been a part of.”

As it is, the 2020 Ravens softball team is the first in program history to finish with a winning record, the team being 10-1 when the season was shuttered. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum is freshman Victoria Van Houten. She was in her chemistry class when she got word that her season was over. 

At dinner with her teammates that evening, she tried to wrap her head around the fact that the spring season was over. 

While Van Houten had run for the cross country team in the fall and indoor track during the winter, she was excited to have one more season’s worth of competition before seniors were done for good. 

“It was sad because I’m close to the seniors on the team,” Van Houten said. “It’s sad because I can’t see them anymore. I really wanted to compete in spring season with them. We were supposed to go after some of the records.”

The steeplechase was set to be her specialty in the spring, despite the fact that it’s an event Van Houten has never competed in before. Now, it’s going to be at least a year before she gets to give it a try.

“Other people are going to have experience,” Van Houten said. “I’m going to be the ‘freshman,’ but as a sophomore doing it. I feel like I just missed a year’s worth of practice.”

Van Houten’s heart goes out to seniors, who now must face the reality that their time as collegiate athletes has come to a close.

“It hurts, and you feel bad for them because you know they were looking forward to it, too,” Van Houten said. “At least I have three more years, but they’re done.”

Such seniors include Jason Reed on the men’s cross-country and track teams, who got the news in a Facebook post from his coach, Zach Emerson. 

It took a couple of days for Reed to absorb the news. After three years spent running at Foxborough High School and four more for the Ravens, his running career is in all likelihood over. 

“My first reaction was shock,” Reed said. “I didn’t really understand that my career was basically over at that point… Obviously, it’s very, very frustrating. We put in the work, not only for this semester, but for the entire year.”

While the NCAA has allowed athletes who lost their spring seasons an additional year of eligibility, a lot of seniors already have the next step in life planned out, whether it be graduate school or the transition to full-time work. 

“I’d love to come back… and be a part of the team that was supposed to be this year,” Mamone said. “I think I have to look at my options and go from there.”

Journalism 2 student Paul Lambert volunteered to write a campus news article this week in the belief that the FPU community deserves to be informed at all times.