Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

For the past year Taylor Cannon dreamed of a perfect senior season.

Instead when the Liberty High senior track standout woke up to a ringing phone on Friday she was hit with a nightmare of an announcement.

“I was sleeping and my phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing and I picked up and it was my best friend and he was like ‘track got cancelled’,” Cannon explained. “I just said ‘what’?”

Unfortunately for Cannon and the rest of the athletes involved in spring sports across the state of Iowa the news was true.

Governor Kim Reynolds announced in a Friday morning news conference that Iowa schools would be closed through the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shortly after Reynolds’ new conference ended the Iowa High School Athletic Association and the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union released a joint statement on Friday announcing the cancellation of the spring sports seasons.

Cannon was one of nearly around 45,000 athletes around the state that will not have a chance to compete in spring sports.

“I was devasted,” Cannon said. “I just burst into tears because I just had so many plans for my senior season and I wasn’t able to fulfill those plans.”

Friday’s announcement was especially difficult for seniors who many of which had their athletic careers come to an abrupt halt.

Summer sports are currently suspended until June 1 when a further decision regarding the baseball and softball seasons will be made.

“It really hurt the heart a little bit,” Clear Creek Amana senior golfer Brandon McCarty said. “I’ve been playing some pretty decent golf so it hurts because I know what I can put out for a score and I know I can compete for a state title.”

For Cannon the best was supposed to come this spring.

Cannon earned her second consecutive runner-up finish in the 100 hurdles last spring, following up a second place finish in Class 3A as a sophomore with a runner-up effort at the Class 4A state meet last season.

After the race Cannon unveiled her goal for her senior season was to go unbeaten on her way to a state title.

Cannon, who posted the 13th fastest time in state history with a 14.45 at the state meet last season, never got that chance.

“It was like it was all lined up for me with my name on it and all I had to do was go get it,” Cannon said. “The hardest part for me is I feel like I was capable of doing it, I wasn’t injured, everything was set up perfectly to go out and get it.

A two-time state qualifier and one of the top returning golfers in the state McCarty found himself in a similar situation.

The Clear Creek Amana senior finished 23rd at the Class 3A state meet that was shortened to one day by rain a year ago with a six-over-par 78.

“I’ve been waiting ever since the end of May at the state tournament where I kind of struggled a little bit for this season,” McCarty said. “My dad texted me in mid-March basically breaking the news that we probably wouldn’t have the season. I think we all expected that this would happen but we all still really wanted the season to happen.”

There were plenty of athletes in the Your Prep Sports area that figured to be in the state title hunt this spring.

The Regina boys soccer team was a three-time defending Class 1A state champion and was attempting to become the first team to win four consecutive state titles.

West High returned three of its top four goal scorers including its leading scorer Brody Schilling and fellow senior Micah Frisbie from a Class 3A runner-up squad that went 18-2 a year ago.

“The hardest part of not playing this year is just how last season ended, losing in the finals,” Frisbie said. “We lost some really good seniors but we also had a lot of great people coming back and we believed in all the younger kids and we knew that this could have been our year.”

The start of the spring sports schedule had been delayed twice, first until April 12 and then to April before the announcement last week that the season was cancelled.

Frisbie was among the athletes that saw the writing on the wall with the cancellation but that foresight didn’t make Friday’s any easier.

“It was definitely sad,” Frisbie said. “I kind of figured that school wasn’t happening because everything was coming at us so fast but I still had a little bit of hope.”

What did take some of the sting off of the cancellation of the season for Frisbie is that there is more soccer in his future.

He will play collegiately at Luther while Cannon will continue her track career at Iowa.

“I still have college soccer to look forward to,” Frisbie said. “That definitely helps that I will still be able to play again.”

McCarty is already prepping for his collegiate golf career at Kirkwood but noted the other athletes that won’t play their respective sports after high school.

“It helps knowing that I’ll play more golf, hopefully this starts to settle down because I’m just looking forward to Kirkwood and having the fall golf season,” McCarty said. “But there are lots of other people in other sports that won’t play again and that’s what made it so sad.”

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