No way to have known: Rattlers’ Antler had his final futsal season cut short, looks forward to awards

By Medicine Hat News on March 28, 2020.

It was a normal Wednesday night and Mason Antler was getting ready for the college futsal team’s second-last practice ahead of conference championships.

The Medicine Hat Rattlers men’s team had played in a pair of tournaments leading up to the finals in Lloydminster. Their 8-2 record suggested a medal was within reach.

“The women I thought had a pretty good chance, we had a decent chance as well,” said the fifth-year veteran.

He saw the report of the NBA suspending play that night due to one of its players contracting the new coronavirus.

“I was kind of joking with some guys like ‘oh, this is probably going to be our last practice, it’s going to get cancelled,'” he said.

“The next morning I was getting all these texts that we’re not going to Lloyd anymore, we’re having a team meeting tonight. I guess I shouldn’t have been joking about it the day before.”

Nobody really knew just how serious it would get. But the result for Antler is that unless his eligibility gets extended somehow – like what happened for NCAA spring sport athletes – he can thank COVID-19 for ending his college career a week early.

“The only real thing for me was the last weekend, missing out on the last bus trip,” he said, while still agreeing with the decision. “That’s always the funnest part, so it was a little sad.”

With a year-and-a-half left in his business program, Antler could be around the college to play should his eligibility be extended. College sport and wellness manager Terry Ballard is part of the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference executive committee and says the potential exists, though it hasn’t been brought up at a high level yet.

“I’m not sure it should be a carte blanche kind of thing because some seasons did end, but on the other point those that didn’t play for a championship, maybe there should be some kind of consideration for some kind of an extension of eligibility,” he said.

If it did come to fruition, Antler could be in the unusual spot of not being eligible for the outdoor soccer season – after all, he did play in the past fall semester – but being allowed to play indoor futsal in 2021.

One thing he can count on is some sort of Rattlers awards ceremony. Ballard’s department hasn’t sorted out details yet but they have decided on who the major award winners will be. They’re holding out hope for an in-person event but an online presentation is looking more and more likely.

The awards were originally slated for early April.

“We have had some suggestions of putting it on our ACAC TV channel, but that won’t be in the near future because we’re restricted to campus access right now,” said Ballard, who’s been working at home for the past week. “Who knows what’s going to happen, but if we can hold off and make it exciting for the winners, that’s what we want to do.”

Other fifth-year Rattlers barely got their seasons in before the world changed. Morgan Muir and the women’s basketball team hosted conference finals the week before cancellations began. Shaya Suchy and Amber Stigter were on home court for the ACAC women’s volleyball playoffs a week before that.

The only other fifth-year Rattlers this season were golfers Ciara Bonogofski and Logan Crawford, whose season was finished months earlier, but there are also plenty of Rattlers who were either transferring or not planning to return in the fall.

All Antler knows is it’s a different world.

“I think the guys are itching to at least get outside when we can and start kicking the ball around again,’ he said. “But we never really know when that could be now.”

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