With big gap between games, Gamecocks had to make difficult decision on holiday travel
The South Carolina women’s basketball team has only played six games, half of what it had played at this point last season. But the Gamecocks have been back in Columbia, practicing and working out, for nearly five months.
So with USC in the midst of a two-week break between its last game, a big win over Temple, and its next contest, the SEC opener against Ole Miss, coach Dawn Staley had to make a choice: Would she allow her players to travel home to see their families around the holidays? Or would she ask them to stay more sheltered on campus to better avoid contracting COVID-19?
In the end, Staley decided to let players go home. But it was far from an obvious decision.
“It was a tough one. I wrestled with it,” Staley said. “But, you know, I just feel like the things that we’ve done here, meaning hunker down, are the same things that they have to do at home. And they said they would do that. Some players are staying here because they just don’t want to put themselves in harm’s way. So we have to figure out what we’re going to do with them.
“But I’d want to be home with my family during this time. And they’ve been here since July, and that’s a lot. It’s a long, long time. So, I mean, the decision is made for them to go home. The only thing we can do is kind of hope and pray that they stay out of harm’s way and come back to us in a place where we can continue what we’re doing. And if not, we’ll pivot and we’ll play whatever players that we have to play.”
The exact timing of the break, Staley said, will make it such that the majority of the team’s 11 players will return to campus by the end of the week.
“It’s a staggering seven days, so they have to come back on Christmas Day. They’ll be back Friday and we’ll take it from there,” Staley said. “Everybody’s going home besides three of our players. Three will stay in town because they’re pretty serious about not wanting to go home and putting themselves in harm’s way. They want to play.”
One of the players who went home is sophomore forward Laeticia Amihere, a native of Mississauga, Ontario in Canada. With travel between the United States and Canada currently restricted because of coronavirus concerns, Amihere’s plans almost didn’t come together.
“At first, I wasn’t able to go home, but I talked to other NCAA athletes that are Canadian as well, and I know my teammates actually reached out to the embassy and found that there was a way that we were able to go home,” Amihere said. “So I’m excited to go home.”
Thus far this season, the Gamecocks have managed to avoid a coronavirus outbreak, though they did have one game canceled as their opponent, Oklahoma, dealt with positive cases and contact tracing. The team did have several pauses due to the virus in the preseason, Staley has previously said.
Reflecting on her own favorite Christmas memories, Staley emphasized the importance of family ties around the holidays.
“This time of the year was always my mother’s favorite time of the year. So it was just kind of being in the house, and she’s cooking and she doesn’t really want anybody in the kitchen with her, and she just wanted to make everybody happy from cooking. You know, she’d spend her last to give us presents to open up on Christmas morning,” Staley said. “So I just love the purity and the innocence of that.”
