When the COVID19 pandemic hit the United States in full force – nearly everything was affected. When ‘everything’ included high school sports, State High School League media specialist John Millea became the public’s on-line window into the High School League’s every significant decision. The outbreak had the MSHL and Millea caught in the middle of a COVID storm.
March 11th was a day no one in athletics will forget.
“I will remember that forever,” Millea said. “The girls’ basketball tournament was going on, and on day one of the tournament, we started hearing rumblings that an NBA player had tested positive. I don’t remember thinking much of it – it is a Utah Jazz player- how is that going to affect us? That night, I got home, and I started seeing the NBA got shut down, and we started to see all these leagues get shut down. On day two of the girls’ tournament, I didn’t watch any basketball. I was in our tournament headquarters room at Williams Arena. We were on conference calls with the office, we were watching the news, and by the end of day two, the decision was made that we were going to keep the season going, but each team will get 100 fans because we didn’t know what COVID was. By Friday morning, the plug had been pulled. The girls’ tournament had been canceled. The boys’ basketball section tournament games that had not been played were not going to be played. That was like an earthquake. We had never seen anything like this. Not long after that, the spring season was canceled.”