Thursday, March 12 was an unprecedented day in the history of Wyoming high school sports.

With 32 basketball teams representing the best of Class 3A/4A in the state scheduled to be in Casper for the 2020 State Basketball Championships, it was shaping up to be a great weekend for Wyoming hoops.

But there was a sea change beginning to take shape across the nation as COVID-19 began to take hold — professional and collegiate leagues had begun taking steps on Wednesday, March 11 to address the outbreak, canceling the NBA regular season and a handful of NCAA conference tournaments. High schools around the country began to follow suit, though the Wyoming High School Activities Association was still given a green light to begin games Thursday morning, despite rumors of a positive test for coronavirus in Wyoming.

“It was chaotic,” said Ron Laird, commissioner of the WHSAA. “I was a little disappointed, to be honest, because we had stayed in contact with both the state Department of Health and the Natrona County Department of Health, and they kept telling us, ‘Nope, everything’s good, go ahead and go.’”

The State Spirit competition had been held at the Events Center on Wednesday; that night, the first recorded case of coronavirus in Wyoming was confirmed in Sheridan.

“We had probably 5,000 people in the Events Center, between the crowd and the kids competing,” he said of the Spirit Competition. “All of that [the coronavirus outbreak] started breaking nationwide — the NBA came out and shut down, the NCAA started shutting down conference tournaments or going [with] no fans. Then the first case in Wyoming was announced, so I actually kind of anticipated that the possibility existed that we could get shut down.”

With games scheduled to tip off at the Casper Events Center and Casper College at 9 a.m. Thursday, Laird called the Natrona County Health Department a little after 8 a.m. to get an update.

“I asked if we were still good to go with everything that had transpired the night before as well as what was happening on the national landscape,” he explained. “They said ‘Yep, go ahead and go.’ I was getting so many emails and texts from the media at that point, asking if we were still on.”

In an effort to be proactive, Laird met up with Brad Murphy — head of the Casper Events Center — to craft a joint press release to let fans and media know the tournament was still a go. Opening games between Lyman and Newcastle at the Events Center and Cheyenne East and Green River at Casper College were underway when the situation began to snowball.

“We were up in Brad’s office at the Events Center putting together the press release when the call came in [a little after 9 a.m.],” Laird said. “The first call said we could go ahead and continue the tournament, but no fans. I was trying to get clarity on what it meant by no fans — obviously we had to have some people in there keeping the clock, keeping the book, that kind of thing.”

Word spread quickly through social media and other outlets that the tournament would go on without fans; shortly after, the decision came down from the Department of Health that they were pulling the plug.

“It was a whirlwind,” Laird said. “We put together a quick press conference since both TV stations were already there upstairs in the hospitality room of the Events Center. First reaction was understandable — everyone wanted to know when we were planning to make it up, plus calls began to come in about track and soccer. Things just kept changing so fast, even nationwide — every hour it was something different. It was a long day.”

A common misconception coming out of the tournament cancellation was that the WHSAA made the final call; that wasn’t the case. It was an infectious disease expert working with the health department who made the decision to cancel the tournament completely.

“The [health department] must have thought we weren’t going to adhere to the decision to cancel — it wasn’t much after that we had the Sheriff’s Department show up with a cease and desist order or they were going to arrest us,” Laird said.

“I thought that was a little overboard — we were just trying to do the best we could on the fly, to be honest.”

The decision not to reschedule the tournament was a difficult one for the WHSAA, and was not made capriciously; with schools closing for the foreseeable future and spring sports suddenly on hold, trying to make up the tournament would be a logistical nightmare.

Not to mention that as the CDC continued to push back the date when things could achieve some semblance of normalcy, suddenly spring sports and other school activities were at risk — a window to make up the tournament in a timely fashion just didn’t exist.

“The feasibility just wasn’t there,” Laird explained. “We felt terrible — especially for the seniors. I coached in 20 of those state tournaments, so I understand the passion and commitment the kids make and what it means to them. All the emotions were there for us, as well.”

The hits kept coming for the WHSAA, who, on the heels of a CDC recommendation on no gatherings of 50 or more people for eight weeks and the closure of schools across the state, announced on Monday, March 16, that all high school activities would be suspended until April 6; that included all practices for spring sports.

With the April 6 deadline a little over a week away and the future of the spring sports seasons still up in the air, the WHSAA was on a conference call earlier this week with the Department of Education to discuss that very issue.

“We’re just sitting on hold right now,” Laird said. “Everybody’s asking that question — who’s going to make the call, when is it going to be made, are we going further than the April 6 date. At this point, they’re telling us they don’t have an answer for us right now. Until we know what schools are going to do, we really can’t do anything from our end.

“I would think that some type of decision would need to be made by next week so that people can make plans for after April 6.”

“We’re hoping all of this has helped assist in stopping the spread of the virus,” Laird added. “We know there’s definitely more cases out there that we don’t know about yet. Hopefully by taking the steps we have, we’ve shut some of that down. Again, we feel terrible about it, but in the big picture, we have to keep our focus where it’s at right now, and that’s keeping people safe and moving on from there.”