WOODLAWN — It’s been a wild few days for high school basketball coaches and players from schools in COVID Region 5. In less than a week, they’ve gone from not being allowed to play to non-contact practice to being allowed to scrimmage and now possibly on the verge of playing games at some point.

The Woodlawn Cardinals jumped at the opportunity to get on the court.

“It’s good to get back in the gym and get with your teammates,” said Woodlawn senior Hayden England. “It’s good to get in and get up and down a little bit, get back in shape.”

“We’ve been struggling to find places to play,” said Woodlawn senior Jackson Tiemann. “The recs have been closed. It’s been hard.”

While it is still up in the air when or if there will be a season, first year head coach Dawson Verhines is taking full advantage of a chance to be able to practice with his team.

“We’ve got a lot of things to learn,” Verhines said. “The more time we get to spend together, the more beneficial it is for our team.”

While it’s Verhines’ first year as head coach, he is certainly no stranger to Woodlawn or Sides Gym. He helped lead the Cardinals to 86 wins and two state trophies from 2009-2011. The current Cardinals were in grade school then, but they remember watching their coach as a player.

“We’ve watched him ever since we were little guys,” Tiemann said. “He would come over to the grade school when we were in his mother’s class in third grade.”

“I feel like that’s a culture thing for Woodlawn basketball,” Verhines said. “I can name some of my favorite players when I was 5-6-7 growing up–Doug Junkins, Nathan Boldt, Matt Poole, Derek Burns, those kind of guys. That’s just the culture we’ve created here.”

It’s a culture this year’s squad is ready to carry on, no matter the circumstances.

“It’s definitely tough mentally and physically,” England said. “You have to be able to adjust through change and stay focused on the goal of winning some games when we get to have some games.”

“I can coach the rest of my life, so I’m not too worried about it for me,” Verhines said. “But for the kids, it’s just hard to grasp what that would be like. Our kids are handling it well. Now that we have the full go ahead to practice,
we’re gonna go every day. We’re gonna get in here and get better and just be ready for whatever’s next.”

Those are thoughts that were on few people’s radar a week ago.