Coronavirus robbed Western’s Men’s Basketball team of the end of their season.

Story by Alex Barnes | Photos Courtesy of Western Athletics

The air was electric as fans walked through the doors of Sam Carver Gymnasium for Western’s Men’s Basketball regular season finale on March 2, 2019. Excited fans found seats in the bleachers to watch the Vikings take on Concordia University on senior night for the team’s lone senior and captain Tyler Payne.

Before the ball tipped off, players, coaches and fans alike knew what was at stake: lose against the Concordia Cavaliers and lose their spot in the GNAC Playoffs, or win and play the duration of the playoffs on their home court.

Winning the GNAC Championship was the goal for the Vikings, but to do it in front of their own fans on their home court would be a scene out of a movie or novel.

But as the buzzer sounded to end the game, the team’s dreams shattered.

Final score: Western 70 — Concordia 79.

The season was over, as were visions of lifting the championship trophy and cutting down the nets, an iconic tradition for winning basketball teams. Missing out on the playoffs is hard enough, but for it to happen on the last day of the season, in front of your own fans and loved ones? Heartbreaking.

Knowing that it was Payne’s last game in a Western jersey made the loss even more difficult for the Vikings to process, especially for the older players who spent several years playing with Payne.

Trevor Jasinsky, Western’s 6’8” starting small forward, was a junior and a team captain for the 2019–2020 season. While missing out on the playoffs was a hard pill to swallow, Jasinsky said the team was more distraught about the end of their friend’s college career.

“Tyler is one of my best friends,” Jasinsky said. “[We’ve] been through a lot. Having that be his last game in a Western uniform, that hurt for us. It wasn’t even the first thing on our mind, the fact that we missed out on getting home court advantage… we wanted to end the season better for Tyler.”

Logan Schilder, Western’s 7’0” starting center and 2020 team captain was another junior that fell short in 2019. He chose to redshirt the previous year because he knew his role on the team would be bigger in 2019–2020. Choosing to redshirt meant that Schilder could not take part in the team’s games, but could still practice and be around the team in a day-to-day capacity.

“It was definitely tough to see,” Schilder said. “Tyler Payne is a great guy, a great player, and he deserved a lot more out of his career and definitely the playoffs would have been a big thing for him.”

Missing out on the playoffs is hard enough, but for it to happen on the last day of the season, in front of your own fans and loved ones? Heartbreaking.

In the days that followed the Vikings’ unwanted end to the season, players struggled to come to terms with watching rival schools come into their own gym to practice. Even worse was knowing that another school would be raising the conference championship trophy on Western grounds.

In some capacity, losing is an inevitable part of life and something that everyone who has played sports has experienced. For those who never played sports, losing a game is like failing a test despite knowing all the material. But the amazing thing about losing in sports compared to losing in other parts of life is that you always have the opportunity to put a loss behind you with the next game. Heading into the offseason, the team’s goal was to do exactly that.

“We had a lot of [players] coming back, so I think that left a lot of people hungry, especially me coming back from not playing [for] a year. I knew I had stuff to prove and Trevor [Jasinsky] had stuff to prove,” Schilder said.

The team’s vested desire to improve on the previous season translated to hard work on the practice court over the offseason months, measured by countless drops of sweat and waking up with sore muscles.

Another factor in the team’s quest for redemption? Knowing that the host site for the 2020 GNAC Championship was at Seattle Pacific University, the school the Vikings watched win on their own court in 2019 after their heartbreaking loss.

The Vikings’ goal was to reach the 2020 GNAC Final and win it on SPU’s homecourt one year removed from them doing the same thing to Western.

“For me personally, it was just hunger and motivation. It hurt knowing that we weren’t going to get to win a championship on our home court and cut down the nets [at Western], but it motivated me extra to know that [the 2020 championship] was going to be held at SPU the next year,” Jasinsky said.

The team’s hunger and motivation led them to an 8–2 start in conference play, recording several blowout victories in the process. The hot start to the GNAC season led the team to believe that, while they had not yet officially clinched a playoff place, they were capable of doing something special this time around. The team’s quick start gave them confidence that they would be prepared for the playoffs.

With three games to go in the GNAC regular season, the Vikings faced their toughest challenge yet: a trip to №1 ranked SPU, who had only lost one game the entire season. The game was close throughout, but when the buzzer sounded, Western had come out on top.

“With the history between SPU and Western, it has always been a battle. Being able to get that [win], especially when they had a great team this year was a great feeling,” Jasinsky said.

For those who never played sports, losing a game is like failing a test despite knowing all the material.

The Vikings handed the SPU Falcons their second loss of the year and clinched their spot in the 2020 GNAC playoffs as a result. The win also confirmed to Schilder that the squad was deep enough to make a playoff run.

The Vikings would enter the playoffs on a high note, buoyed by a 69–60 win against Simon Fraser University in their final home season matchup. Two weeks later, the Vikings traveled to Seattle, where the Royal Brougham Pavilion played host to the GNAC Championships.

The semi-final game saw Jasinsky catch fire on the court, filling the basket with 24 points, five rebounds and two blocked shots. The senior seemed unstoppable, and his dominant display led Western to a 76 to 64 victory against the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

All of the blood, sweat and tears that the team expended throughout the previous year led them to the GNAC Championship game against the University of Alaska Anchorage. One final hurdle stood between Western and the coveted conference title.

While Jasinsky and Schilder were a part of the Western team that won the 2017 GNAC Championship, they viewed this 2020 title as more important because of their increased roles with the team.

Jasinsky had gone from a bench role in 2017 to becoming the team’s leading scorer, eventually finishing his college career as the eighth highest point-scorer in school history. Schilder had cemented himself as the team’s starting center, recording four double-double’s during the 2019–2020 season, and finished his college career with the fifth-most number of blocks in school history.

Through 38 minutes of the final contest the Vikings found themselves down by three points and a senior leader after Schilder fouled out of the contest. The team would need to score at least twice to go ahead, or even less likely, score via a four-point play, the only way to do so by scoring a three-pointer while being fouled.

Improbably, that is exactly what happened when senior guard Leif Anderson nailed a three from the corner before being bundled over by an Anchorage player.

A massive shot from one of the team’s most appreciated players.

“I’ve played against Leif in high school, played with him at junior college, played with him here, and there was no doubt in my mind he was going to make that,” Schilder said.

Western led by one point in the dying embers of the game when Jasinsky hauled down the rebound of a wayward Anchorage shot through major contact. His tenacity on the glass earned him a trip to the free-throw line and a chance to put the Vikings up by three points with only one second remaining in the game.

The ball bounced off the court, echoing through the building as Jasinsky’s eyes fixed on the basket. Swish. The first free throw was good, two-point lead. Bounce, bounce, bounce, swish. The score was now Western 81 — Anchorage 78, where it remained when the contest’s final buzzer blared through the gym.

The Vikings were GNAC Champions and headed to San Diego to play in the NCAA West Regional tournament preceding the NCAA Division II tournament. Through hard work and mental resilience the team seized back control of their basketball destiny, and for the team’s six seniors, one last chance to achieve greatness on the national stage.

Or so they thought.

When the team set course for Southern California, everybody thought that the tournament would proceed as planned. The pandemic was in the news, but players and coaches had just taken part in the conference championship a few days earlier, how could things be canceled so abruptly?

The Vikings had already traveled to Southern California when NCAA President Mark Emmert broke the news on March 12: All remaining winter and spring NCAA Championships were canceled because of the rapidly developing COVID-19 situation.

“There was a lot of uncertainty around everything,” Jasinsky said. “I think for all of us we were just like, ‘There’s no way they’re going to cancel it right?’ Other than there being lots of hand sanitizing stations and people being extra cautious, it was a normal game.”

It wasn’t until the news broke that two Utah Jazz players, Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, tested positive for COVID-19, and the NBA suspended the remainder of their season, that the Vikings began to suspect the situation would change for the worse.

“If the NBA is not going to play, I highly doubt they’re going to let us play. That’s when it started to set in,” Jasinsky said.

While the NCAA announced that spring sports athletes who saw their seasons canceled due to COVID-19 would have access to another year of eligibility, college basketball players are not being afforded the same luxury. Students across the country saw the effort they invested toward accomplishing their college basketball dreams go up in smoke almost instantly.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Jasinsky said. “Once we made the national tournament, I was like, ‘alright there’s going to be two feelings I’m going to feel by the end of this: I’m either going to be crying because I’m so happy because we just won the national championship, or I’m going to be crying because we lost and my college career is over.’”

The one thing that nobody on the team prepared for was not getting any closure on how the season could have ended. The dreaded question of, “What if?”

“I still feel it to this day, It’s just kind of an emptiness,” Jasinsky said. “My heart goes out to all the seniors out there who had to go through something like this. I would have taken a loss over this any day of the week.”

While the national tournament was taken away from the team, something that will never be taken from them is the memory of securing the GNAC Championship after one of the greatest comeback stories in Western’s basketball history.

“I still feel it to this day, It’s just kind of an emptiness,” Jasinsky said. “My heart goes out to all the seniors out there who had to go through something like this. I would have taken a loss over this any day of the week.”

Every cloud has a silver lining. For the six seniors on the team, Schilder put that silver lining into perspective.

“We ended our careers by cutting down nets and winning the GNAC title, and I think that’s what you have to look back on more than the fact that we didn’t get to finish.”