COVID-19 ends Sullivan South’s magical season
KINGSPORT, Tenn. (BVM) — One tweet thrust the Sullivan South boys basketball team into the national spotlight, but not for the reason it had hoped. On March 12, Rebels head coach Michael McMeans had received news that the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association had postponed the rest of its postseason basketball tournaments. His team would not be allowed to complete its season due to concerns over COVID-19.
“We won Monday night in Knoxville against Alcoa, get back home around midnight or so and then leave to go to Murfreesboro the next day at 10 or 11 and have the state tournament draw and come back on Wednesday,” McMeans said. “We start hearing rumors and of course all this stuff starts happening and the virus starts picking up steam….We held out hope for a little bit that we’d at least go play and all of this happened from a Monday to Friday timeframe and next thing we know by Friday night it’s put on postponement.”
The stars seemed to be aligned for McMeans’ Sullivan South team. For the first time in their 40-year history, the school was going to go to the state basketball tournament with a school-best 30-5 record. The team boasted five seniors including Ben Diamond, the Three Rivers Conference Player of the Year. McMeans was named the conference’s Coach of the Year.
But perhaps most significantly, the Rebels’ first appearance in the state tournament was going to coincide with the school’s final year of existence. The school district plans to consolidate its high schools at the end of the school year, thus Sullivan South’s road will end there, no future opportunities for the school to return to the tournament.
“(The new school is) something that has been in the works for a few years now….It’s something that probably really needed to be done,” McMeans said. “It was tough because this is the first time in school history, the school has been up for 40 years now, and this was the first year we had ever made the state tournament. That was one of our goals when we started the season. We thought we had a chance to get there and that’s something we worked for all year.
“Having to go in and tell them it was hurt. The kids they hurt. For me, it was like somebody punched me in the gut having to tell them. It hurt me,” McMeans said. “You had kids they tear up, they’re sad, it was an emotional time. I think everybody kind of knows the reality of what’s about to happen. We knew once they postponed it, chances are it’s not going to get played.”
McMeans said it hurt because there wasn’t a chance for the team to be able to have closure with each other on the season. Instead, it just went from hurt to confusion.
“Most of the time when you do this in sports there are only three teams (in Tennessee) that will win their final game and so you have a chance if you do lose in the locker room to kind of have closure with each other. You kind of reflect, you hug each other and you get that closure that it’s over and for us we didn’t get to have that closure.”
It was the next day that McMeans saw a tweet by ESPN broadcaster Scott Van Pelt. Van Pelt posted a tweet asking anybody for college and high school athletes who lost their seasons due to the COVID-19 outbreak to share their stories, photos and videos in replies to the tweet with the #SeniorNight to receive the recognition that they would now miss. McMeans knew what to do.
Van Pelt’s tweet went up at 4:02 p.m. on March 13. At 5:05 p.m., McMeans replied to it.
“This is Sullivan South from Kingsport Tennessee. We made the basketball state tournament for the first time in the 40 year school history. The school is set to close next year. The state is canceling the tournament. These kids and this school will never get to enjoy going,” the tweet said.
“I guess it was within a couple of hours of when it came out and I wasn’t a big Twitter user or anything, not a big social media guy, but I was sitting there thinking I want to honor my guys and honor my team and I kept thinking looking at that our story is as good as anybody else’s with the school closure, with us never being able to make a state tournament, just the group of seniors we had and I just kept thinking about it and thought, ‘Let’s just put our name out there and see what happens,’” McMeans said.
Just like that the team’s story was now national. The tweet is still one of the most popular on the thread with 1,668 likes, 217 retweets and 23 comments.
This is Sullivan South from Kingsport Tennessee. We made the basketball state tournament for the first time in the 40 year school history. The school is set to close next year. The state is canceling the tournament. These kids and this school will never get to enjoy going pic.twitter.com/2RqkZPs8KT
— Michael McMeans (@MichaelPMcMeans) March 13, 2020
“It starts getting all the likes, retweets and comments on it and I thought, ‘Wow. This could be real good for us.’ …it kind of took off pretty fast within hours of us putting it out there,” McMeans said.
Many of the comments are words of congratulations, disbelief and well wishes.
“You can’t read that and say sports don’t matter,” Twitter user Rod Crawford wrote to which McMeans replied, “100% agree.”
On March 17, Van Pelt recognized the team on the third day of his #SeniorNight segment of his hour of SportsCenter. Now, McMeans team was not only at the epicenter of the pandemic and its effects on sports, but the epicenter of the entire sports world.
“I sent a message to all of my players and told them to watch. We all kind of messaged back and forth how cool it was to be on ESPN and when you hear your name on there and see our picture and he talks about us a little bit in that moment you can’t really breathe. Like, wow you made SportsCenter,” McMeans said. “That was a really cool moment for us and something that never would have happened if it wasn’t for the current situation so it was really exciting for those guys.”
For McMeans, it was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. From growing up playing games on his driveway with his brothers or his friends pretending to be in the NBA and on the show to now actually being there.
“For me personally, it has been a childhood dream. I’m 38-years-old and even growing up we didn’t have cell phones, we didn’t have all this stuff. So on the TV that’s what we did, we watched SportsCenter and so you grew up like, ‘Wow. How cool would that be to one day be on there?,’ McMeans said. “So when it came on that night, I was sitting there in my living room and I couldn’t breathe. I was like, ‘Wow! They just mentioned my name and showed my team and our school.’ So, it was one of those moments there for 15 seconds, 20 seconds or 30 seconds or whatever he talked about it I couldn’t breathe. I was just kind of in awe, we were on SportsCenter.”
A childhood dream of mine was just fulfilled. We made SportsCenter! Love all my players and coaches what a great ride this year was. @notthefakeSVP @JHUMP12 @SulSouthHS @southrebelslive @SouthBasketbal2 @SSHS_Section https://t.co/YDzB9t7UKa
— Michael McMeans (@MichaelPMcMeans) March 18, 2020
Although the team did not get the sendoff it had hoped for at the beginning of the season, McMeans said this moment helped to give the team a memorable end and some sense of closure.
“The attention it has gotten has kind of given us somewhat of a good feeling and a good send off for these guys since they are not going to be able to go play,” McMeans said. “It’s kind of a dream come true to be able to be in that moment and be on SportsCenter. It was a neat consolation prize since we couldn’t go play in the state tournament, it’s a neat thing that happened and something we will definitely never forget.”
On April 15, the TSSAA announced it would cancel the rest of its spring sports seasons, including the remaining basketball state tournaments. With that, the season for Sullivan South was over. At least the members of the team will be able to remember all it accomplished for the school to make its final year a memorable one.
“This would be the greatest all-time season in school history,” McMeans said. “We’ll look back on it as a historic year where we broke all the records and accomplished all our goals we set at the beginning of the year. Look back on it as a historic season, as a special season. … This team will be the standard for me going forward. This will always be the standard that my future teams will be judged against that we talk about and try to get all our future teams to be like.
“It was a big family atmosphere and everybody loved each other. We cried together and we laughed together and we all just loved each other so much. I think that’s what good teams are made of, it’s just something that will never be done again.”
