Good for her.
This past Sunday, the New York Liberty of the WNBA secured their first championship in the franchise’s 28-year history. But while the city of New York celebrated its first basketball title in 51 years and one of the league’s founding eight franchises got off the schneid, my first thoughts went to the University of Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu who finally got what was likely taken from her four years ago — a championship.
Sure, she was the league’s number one overall pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft and even earned a gold medal this past summer in Paris as a member of the USA women’s basketball team. But it’s what she and her Ducks team lost as the result of the pandemic that has and probably still haunts the 26-year-old.
If you’re a competitor you probably know that it’s not the wins that come to the forefront of your mind, but rather the losses.
The play you didn’t make.
The team you never beat.
The game you didn’t win, or in this case the one you never had an opportunity to play.
It’s one thing to lose something, but to never have had a chance to do so is a torturous feeling for people built with the competitive bone.
In 2020, the University of Oregon women’s basketball team was 31-2 overall, won both the Pac-12 Conference’s regular season and tournament titles, and was No. 2-ranked in both the AP and Coaches polls prior to the NCAA Tournament.
Despite trailing South Carolina in the polls, the Ducks were picked by many to be the favorites to win the women’s title that year, and from the day after they were defeated in the national semifinal the year prior, appeared destined to claim what they’d come so close to taking before a five-point loss to eventual champion Baylor ended their 2019 dream.
But that never happened. Instead, they and everyone else got to sit inside for a couple months, wear masks for even longer, and since, Ionescu and her teammates were left to wonder what could’ve been for a group that will simply never know.
They’re not alone. History will forever speak not to sport’s winners in 2020, but rather all who lost as the result of COVID-19.
That includes Ionescu and the Ducks, but also local high school teams that too aspired to the promised land.
Teams like the Liberty High School girls who defeated Cameron Brink and her Mountainside Mavericks in the state quarterfinal on March 11 of that year; the Beaverton High School girls basketball team who too advanced to that same semifinal with a win over Metro rival Southridge; Hillsboro High School’s softball team that boasted two-time all-state pitcher Mckenzie Staub and was amongst the favorites to win the 5A title; and countless other spring 2019 baseball, softball, track & field, golf, tennis and lacrosse athletes who were forced outside the lines instead of competing within them.
It was a difficult time for all of us, but an especially tough one for young athletes watching potential lifelong memories pass them by.
Liberty and Beaverton will never get that chance back; nor will Hillsboro or any of those same countless spring athletes who never even got to “lace ‘em up.”
The 2020 Oregon Ducks women’s team can relate, but at least for awhile Sunday evening they may have gotten to feel something via their former teammate, Sabrina Ionescu, that they didn’t four years ago. I hope that helped them, for I’m sure it did her.
Good for you, Sabrina. Good for you.
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