With all spring sports canceled and athletes sent home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, coaches and players are struggling with the changing reality.

Tracy Archuleta, head coach of the baseball team, said it’s important for everyone to understand how bad the situation and how important it is for everyone to stay up to date on the information released.

“Nothing’s concrete yet,” he said. “And that’s what’s really hard for all of us is we don’t have a set date or know when graduation is going to be different things like that. Once everything starts moving forward, we’ll be able to have a better idea of what we need.”

Archuleta said that information is coming from everywhere and from so many angels that it could be confusing. 

“It comes from talk, it comes from the NCAA and countries around the world talking about different things on what we know what’s gonna happen in different avenues and how we need to look at it,” Archuleta said. “So every day things change so we have to be able to adapt to those changes to make sure our student-athletes and the rest of the coaches have all the information in order for them to move forward.”

He said since school has been moved online, he has been answering emails and canceling events he had planned throughout the spring semester and into the summer while scheduling games and events for next spring.

“We got to continue to work on future years’ scheduling and different things like that,” he said. “Basically, it’s doing office work at home and then just waiting to hear back and keeping in contact with our student-athletes. Making sure any questions that they have about school and just helping them through this time and make sure that academically, they’re on the right track.”

With the uncertainty following COVID-19, there is a lot of time to prepare the next season, but no certainty when it will end. Archuleta said that he hopes next season will be just like any other.

“[Next season] will be just like any normal season when we get back and just head in the right direction and adjust to the different things,” Archuleta said. 

He said not playing baseball with the students is tough, but the main thing to focus on right now is to make sure everyone is healthy and the virus isn’t spreading. Archuleta said he would like for everyone to be able to move forward and get back to normal after the virus has passed.

“Not being able to play the game of baseball is definitely tough, but like I said, that’s another small thing in the big picture,” he said. “The big picture is making sure that my family and everybody is healthy. And also making sure that our student-athletes on the baseball team are healthy and they can move forward in their next task and goals in the future.”