'Is this a bad dream?': Ole Miss coaches explain challenges, journeys home amid coronavirus

OXFORD — Switzerland. Sweden. Finland. Thailand. Canada. France. Czechia. 

Ole Miss coaches have had to monitor flights to those countries and more in the past week.

After the SEC and NCAA shut down 2020 spring sports participation, many Ole Miss athletes had no choice but to travel back to their home countries, taking connecting flight after connecting flight to return to their families amid the spread of the coronavirus.

This week, the Clarion Ledger spoke to the head coaches from five Ole Miss spring sports programs: women's tennis coach Mark Beyers, men's golf coach Chris Malloy, women's golf coach Kory Henkes, track and field coach Connie Price-Smith and interim softball coach Ruben Felix. 

All five detailed the complex feelings associated with the week since coronavirus cancellations stopped their seasons mid-stream. Here are the stories of Ole Miss athletics' less-publicized programs in the wake of one of the most surreal weeks in the history of college athletics.

The journeys home
When the news came out Thursday morning that the SEC had suspended all athletic competition until March 30, Ole Miss sports teams were scattered across the country.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, 19 track and field athlets and staffers were at the NCAA Indoor Championships. The women's golf team was in Augusta, Georgia at the Valspar Augusta Invitational. The women's tennis team had just landed in Baton Rouge in advance of a Friday match against LSU. The men's golf team was in Oxford, but had just  returned from San Diego, California, one night before.

With all of those events canceled, these programs had no choice but to scramble and find a way home. The track and field team got lucky, Price-Smith said. So many other would-be travelers canceled their flights that her group found a flight home for Thursday morning.

Beyers' and Henkes' teams weren't as lucky. Upon landing in Baton Rouge, Beyers learned the news of the day. He and his team located their luggage, found a quick place to eat lunch, rented a fleet of minivans and then drove back to Oxford. 

The women's golf team rented a van. But before the squad departed Augusta, it decided to stop and buy groceries. With all the rumors of Mississippi stores running out of essentials, the players figured it would be wise to stock up on provisions in Georgia while the stores were still full.

"It was really tough, a series of tough conversations on that van ride home," Henkes said. "Seeing our seniors cry and upset to see their whole season ripped away from them."

Each coach admitted to having similar conversations with their players. Price-Smith said she called 80-plus athletes individually over the weekend to check on their well-being. Malloy joked that moments like these are what differentiates a coach from a sports tutor.

And Beyers, he just kept things as honest with his players as he could.

"As coaches, I guess a lot of times we're expected to have answers," Beyers said. "This is a situation where I was just as confused as the players were."

The challenge of the next step
Obviously, the SEC's suspension on sports competition only intensified. Within a few days, it got pushed from March 30 to April 15 to through the end of the season. But one precaution that did stay constant was an evacuation of campuses until April 15. 

This meant no practices, no team meetings and no dorm living. For a number of athletes, this meant a short window to pack up or find storage for their belongings in Mississippi and fly over international waters to be with their families.

Malloy has a golfer from Thailand who spent all of Monday and Tuesday traveling to get home on Wednesday. Henkes has a golfer in Switzerland, a country that has closed all shops, restaurants, bars and leisure facilities and entered into a state of emergency. She also has golfers in Sweden, a country expected to take similar precautions.

Beyers, who himself is from The Netherlands, said only one of his five international athletes elected to return home. The other four chose to stay in Oxford.

"It was tough," Beyers said. "Some of the kids were talking to their parents and trying to figure out if it was better to stay in Oxford or go home. We just coordinated that with each kid individually."

An unprecedented feeling
Ole Miss coaches are going through the same stages of confusion and hardship as everyone else in the country right now.

"I feel like every day I woke up for three or four days I was like 'Is this a bad dream? Am I have a reoccurring bad dream?'" Henkes admitted. "I couldn't wrap my head around it."

Any semblance of normalcy is shot. Coaches can't travel for recruiting visits, per NCAA regulation. They can't have recruits on campus either. Their athletes are scattered across the globe. Schedules that had been booked weeks and months in advance have been wiped out. 

Henkes and Felix said they're working on finalizing next year's schedules. All of the coaches said they're in near-constant communication with their players, signees and down-the-line recruits to keep them abreast of the latest news.

For Felix, this is doubly-complicated. He's been Ole Miss' interim softball coach since December. He has to assure his players and recruits about what the program will look like in a year when he doesn't have any assurances that he'll be in charge next year.

"I try to keep them at ease," Felix said. "Hopefully the university does a great job at whoever they interview and hopefully they give me a shot. I think I'm more than qualified to take over and do good things at this program."

Ole Miss athletics director Keith Carter said he had not begun the search for a new head softball coach when asked about the matter on Monday. Felix said he has not been contacted about an interview for the position yet but hopes to be asked.

Even Ole Miss' full-time head coaches are racked with uncertainty in these times. Not one of them has ever taken a spring off from work. Malloy said he hopes he never has to again. 

Beyers laughed a little bit thinking the free time. There are plenty of entries on his "bucket list" that he's always wanted to check off if he didn't devote a spring to coaching tennis. Like spending a weekend at The Masters in Augusta. But of course, The Masters has been canceled too. 

So Beyers is resigned to catching up on Netflix. Malloy said he only started thinking about himself on Tuesday, and as of then hadn't figured out how he'd spend his time other than with his children. 

Henkes, who is pregnant and expecting a child on June 5, is using the time to be a wife and mother. She joked that she never had to plan meals or buy groceries for two weeks in advance. Now she's getting to cook for her daughter and take some of the load off her husband, a physician assistant, in a time where his job is becoming increasingly vital.

"It's probably the first time maybe ever that we've had this much time to spend with our family," Henkes said. "So I can't complain about that, but it's definitely different."

As for Henkes' counterpart in golf coaching, Malloy is trying to keep things in perspective as best he can.

"Listen, our problems could be a whole lot bigger," he said. "The fact that they've taken golf away from us and we can't compete in the SEC or NCAA championship this year, I think all you have to do is turn on the news to see that our problems are what you call first-world problems.

"This is life. It can be a major curveball, I understand, but I don't think any of us have to look very far to find out that our problems could be a whole lot worse."

SOURCE: Suss, Nick. "'Is this a bad dream?': Ole Miss coaches explain challenges, journeys home amid coronavirus." Mississippi Clarion Ledger, 21 March 2020, https://www.clarionledger.com/story/sports/college/ole-miss/2020/03/21/ole-miss-coaches-explain-challenges-after-coronavirus-cancellations/2865351001/

Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.