Rumors were spreading like wildfire early last Tuesday that the Rockhurst and Joplin district opener was in serious jeopardy after a Hawklets player who participated in the season finale had tested positive for COVID.
Through the midway point of Tuesday’s practice, Eagles coach Curtis Jasper received a text message from Joplin Athletic Director Matt Hiatt that MSHSAA had made it official, Rockhurst was forfeiting.
“We’ve been blessed with being able to play as much of the season as we have,” Jasper said when asked about his initial reaction to the news of Rockhurst’s forfeit. “Heading into the season, we didn’t know how much we would have. But to have your season end like that, with it not being on the field, is gut wrenching. There was a lot of confliction there, but eventually, you just have to kind of admit we are lucky to have what we’ve had so far, and hopefully it continues.”
Of course, with Rockhurst forced to forfeit, though there was certainly sympathy from the Joplin coaching staff, it was also a teaching moment on why staying safe and following precautionary protocols is of the utmost importance, particularly right now when your season could be done with one positive test.
“Anything we can use to try and show as an example, that is what we’re going to do,” Jasper said. “You obviously can’t control everything, but control what you can as best you can.”
With the forfeit, Joplin essentially earned a bye week in the first round of the state playoffs. Though the win was unconventional, the Eagles were happy, if anything, just to get an extra week to heal up from injuries.
“We have been banged up pretty much all year long,” Jasper said. “Anytime you get more time to heal up to get us at our fullest strength possible, we are going to take advantage of that.”
In one particular case, sophomore wide receiver Dante Washington — who was injured in Week 3 before returning in the season finale against Neosho to catch two passes for 29 yards and a score to go along with six rushes for 44 yards and another touchdown — will have less limitations on the field because of the extra week off.
“Just another week to work him back into the offense where he is comfortable is huge,” Jasper said of Washington. “We are really deep at receiver, so it allows us another week to look at all of those guys and figure out where to put them so they can be successful.”
In turn, his players responded well. The roster held the same intensity throughout the week, impressing the coaching staff in the process.
“Ultimately, when we got back out on the field for Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I thought our kids did a really good job,” said Jasper.
Even though the coaching staff knew the game was forfeited midway through practice on Tuesday, they didn’t tell the players until after the practice was complete to make sure they didn’t lose the competitive edge in that practice, or for the rest of the week.
“As a teenager, everything is right in front of your nose,” Jasper said. “We really hammered it home to them that we couldn’t mentally take any of these days off or physically take any of these days off. If we are going to have a chance to be successful and make a run through districts, we have to use that time to get stuff done.”
After making Wednesday a light day because of the weather, the Joplin coaching staff used practices on Thursday, Friday and Saturday with the players to clean some things up on their end.
“We got a lot done in those three days,” Jasper said. “We did some team work, but it was just us-on-us stuff with some things we wanted to look at. It was a lot of fundamental work, things we wanted to get to anyway.”
While the players weren’t necessarily taking part in prepping for the next opponent, the Joplin coaching staff certainly was. With the extra four or so days, the Eagles’ coaching staff got a head start on the basic preparation for both Raymore-Peculiar and Lee’s Summit, with both teams similar in schemes.
“We tried not to get too committed to one team or another, but we probably leaned a little more to Ray-Pec,” Jasper said. “The nice thing is, we knew both of them were spread teams (on offense) and four-man front teams (on defense). So, we could work some of that in without getting too far into one team or the other.
“You use that time as best to your advantage. … You can really get a head start on scouting, and on Saturday morning when we went back in after we knew it would be Ray-Pec, we put in that preliminary stuff we had already started into effect for that practice.”
