Looking Back: Dan Briand
(The Looking Back series features Anna Maria College spring student-athletes and coaches to tell their story about what they will miss following the cancellation of the spring season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We celebrate our student-athletes and coaches by allowing them to share their stories and hope these articles can bring a positive light to anyone who reads them during these trying times.)
Written By Dan Briand / Head Baseball Coach
PAXTON, MA - Wow, trying to look back on all this will be tough so I will do the best I can to articulate my thoughts and feelings on all this. The best way to describe it is that even to this moment it is still very surreal. With so much uncertainty, information, and situations changing day to day, hour to hour, and even at times minute to minute, it has a very surreal/unreal feeling. It feels like we are watching a movie, the only difference is that this is real. Real-life and we all need to take this entire situation seriously which by now I feel most, if not all people understand. Looking back on the timeline of how all these events have unfolded up until now, there was talk about this back in January when our spring season began. It was brushed off by most including me with the attitude of “not our problem, they’ll figure it out before it really affects us.” Wow, was I wrong there! As things started to accelerate in other countries and even our own country, I still was looking at it like “hey, we deal with guys out on a daily basis with the flu, a cold, or whatever else at any given time through the semester and the season.” So again, taking the approach like we will deal with it if it comes up. But, we have a season to prepare for so for us it is business as usual as much as possible. Then came the meeting with the administration prior to our trip. At that time in the media, people talked about not traveling or flying and avoid crowds. The heightened awareness of hygiene, hand washing, and all that came along with it. I definitely took precautions but again with the information available, and I was aware and prepared for if something comes up, and fortunately continuing on with normal daily activities, for now. After I left that meeting with our head of health services, head Athletic Trainer, Athletic Director, and Dean, I felt comfortable making the trip and everything was going to be okay. It was not until we got down to Florida about halfway through the trip where the gravity of the situation really hit me, and even then I stayed in the denial phase for another 24/48 hours. I just kept telling myself "no way, there is no way this is really happening." Then life as we knew it was about to change. Things we take for granted on a daily basis were no more. Things we complained about having to do I could get 35 guys to volunteer to do them right now with one text. We would play in masks, or HAZMAT suits if they would let us. But as we saw the cancelations roll in, NESCAC canceling all spring sports, then the Ivy League, some other big schools canceled on their own. But soon it was entirely all professional leagues, then the NCAA men's and women's March Madness tournaments got canceled and at that point, it hit me. For the first time throughout this entire process, this was real life and really happening. Life as we know it was about to change for at least the short term until we could get this virus under control. This was bigger than baseball, this is a real-life and real-world issue. Life and death, not just a game.
Through it all our administration once again was there for us, supporting us, and doing everything in their power to let us have our season. I knew this was a special group, you can tell when you have a championship group, they have that look in their eye, they do all the little things on their own, they hold each other to a higher standard because the expectation here is to win and compete for championships every year. We have put years of our lives into this, me, my coaching staff, and these student-athletes. Years of our lives to build our program for this moment, this season, and this playoff run. We all knew it, and it was clear the way that we played. Our administration knew it as well. I will forever be grateful to President Retelle, and Joe Brady, our Director of Athletics, for recognizing how important our season is to us, not just baseball, but any student-athlete at Anna Maria College. They did everything they could to let us play our season until the information from the medical experts suggested otherwise. Common sense and science dictated that we along with everyone else had to step back, take a break, and do our small part to help the world get a handle on this awful virus.
As far as the timeline I detailed earlier, the toughest part for me was composing myself, understanding how serious this situation had become, accepting reality, and then explaining it to a group of kids that I love like family. I had to explain to them that the season they worked so hard for, put so much into, and literally did everything we had asked of them had to end when we played our last game in Florida. That crushed me. This was supposed to be our year. We had gone through the rebuild, taken our lumps, gained the experience necessary to learn how to win at this level. We were ready, and we proved that. At the end of the day that is what I miss the most. I miss the boys, I miss the daily interaction, pushing them, developing them, and trying to get the most out of them. Even simple things like sitting in the office with five to six student-athletes just talking about baseball, life, and whatever else. Having lunch in the dining hall with them, the other coaches, coaches of other sports, and professors. That for me is the toughest part, and that is what I miss the most and look forward to getting back to.
Soon enough we will have this all under control, and resume our daily lives that we are all used to living. Years from now we will look back on this as a time of strength and growth for us all. There is a lot of life lessons we will be able to take out of this situation. This will hopefully bring us even closer together as a program, and with this new perspective, I hope we never take a day, practice, or rep off or for granted ever again. This is an experience that certainly puts life into perspective for us all. I hope everyone uses this time to focus on their academics, adjust to, and embrace the remote learning model that our school has worked so hard to create in short order to continue to provide the best experience possible for our students. I also want everyone to understand that all the resources we have available on a daily basis are still there. The college is still open and operational, it is just how we temporarily have to operate until the medical experts allow us to return to life as we are all accustomed to when it is safe to do so.
Stay Safe!
STAY CONNECTED:
For the latest on Anna Maria College Athletics, follow the AMCATS via social media on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
