Quincy Moorman was supposed to be in Florida with his softball team this week, roughly a dozen games into his first year as the head coach at Owensboro High School.
Instead, he’s at home wondering if they’ll even play a game.
“It feels terrible,” Moorman said. “To be honest with you, it’s awful. It’s looking more and more every day like we’re not going to get to play at all.”
Moorman said part of the reason it stings so much is the shutdown came so suddenly. When it all started he got a call saying practice had to be cancelled for the rest of the week, and it quickly turned into much more.
“At that point, we thought we would wait a couple days and see what happens. It snowballed from there,” he said. “We were supposed to be in Florida right now playing six games during spring break. That was the girl’s biggest concern – are we going to get to go to Florida? At the time, I’m thinking, ‘Why wouldn’t we?’”
After serving as an assistant coach for the Lady Devils last season, Moorman was excited for his first season at the helm. He said the girls had been putting in a lot of hard work all offseason.
“This year, we’ve had a huge turnout,” he said. “Even when it was not mandatory practice we had 23-24 girls showing up consistently. Last year it was four or five.”
Though there’s only two seniors on the team — Mady Poole and Molly Hudson — Moorman said it’s still a tough situation for them to possibly not get a chance to play.
“We only have two, but you feel bad for them,” he said. “I don’t think either have a desire to play at the next level, but it’s their last season to be able to play softball at this level ever.”
The chances of playing gets slimmer with each day, but Moorman remains hopeful. For now, though, everyone is restricted to working out alone.
Though getting on the diamond with his team is a top priority, Moorman said the safety of everyone involved takes precedence.
“I hope we get to play but it doesn’t look good,” he said. “We’ve already missed 13-14 games by the end of this week. If we started back in a couple weeks, we’re already 20 games down the drain. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. We have to do what’s right for the safety of the fans, the parents, the players – everybody.”
