14 days alone in a hotel room. For USC’s George Callil, it was a final hurdle to home
Fresh off a plane in his home country of Australia, South Carolina baseball player George Callil had to improvise.
The senior shortstop had planned to bounce from Columbia to Atlanta to Los Angeles to Sydney and finally home to Melbourne. Only once he got to Sydney, there was a delay — two weeks of delay.
Those two weeks were for quarantine, a byproduct of the coronavirus pandemic that ended his senior season and forced him home.
“I was prepared for mandatory home quarantine where I wouldn’t be able to leave the house for any reason other than for medical issues,” Callil told The State in an email. “But it was only the night before I left as I was packing that my dad called me to let me know I was going to be held in a hotel for the two weeks.”
And that’s how the senior found himself trying to jury-rig up a situation to get around a TV that wasn’t connected to anything despite literally not being able to leave.
“I’m not sure why I assumed I would be given my hotel room key, but when I arrived at my room I asked the escorting police officer for my room key,” Callil wrote. “He sternly reminded me that I am for no reason allowed out of my room. I traveled with all my essential belongings from Columbia so I had my laptop and obviously phone with me. After discovering the TV in my room was useless, I was able to purchase an HDMI cord to connect my laptop with the TV screen.”
Callil was part of the exodus of South Carolina students who scattered to homes across the country and around the world. He had one of the longest journeys, crossing hemispheres and one of the more unusual challenges.
He’d waited until the end of March to make his departure, holding out until there was no possibility in-person classes might resume. The process of getting a flight home was a bit of a challenge, as such flights were scarce and expensive, in his words.
And when Callil landed down under, he found out he’d be a guinea pig of sorts.
“My flight from LAX was the first international arrival since the hotel isolation was put in place,” Callil wrote. “So we really didn’t know what to expect. We kind of just went with whatever we were told.”
So then came two weeks of true isolation: hotel life, meals delivered, at home in theory but not really anywhere in spirit.
Australia has not seen much in the way of coronavirus cases, with only 6,547 as of Sunday morning, according to a database from John Hopkins. That’s less than 18 states in America.
He is now safely home with family.
A defensive specialist for the Gamecocks, Callil had been hitting .271 when the Gamecocks’ season was suddenly abbreviated. For a moment, it appeared as if his career was simply done, before the NCAA gave athletes the chance to return if their schools allowed.
USC Athletics Director Ray Tanner said any athlete who wants to return to South Carolina is welcome to.
“Knowing that I would be granted another year of college eligibility was a great relief for me,” Callil wrote. “There was a little uncertainty as to how it was going to be handled, but to finally see it announced by the NCAA was reassuring.”
