As we roll through the summer months of this strange and uncertain year of 2020, we are starting to see more dominos fall in the collegiate sports world. The college football season being threatened and countless conferences cancelling their fall sports seasons in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While your heart goes out for the athletes that have had their upcoming senior season cancelled, this feeling has been all too familiar. It started back in March when the graduating senior class of 2020 had their senior seasons ripped from them in the middle of their playoff runs, or at the beginning for their season.

For the Quinnipiac Bobcats Men’s Lacrosse team, their season was taken from them just six games into their 2020 season leaving their five seniors wondering what was going to happen next.

Senior midfielder Tyler Mackay was trying to build off a 21 goal, six assist campaign in 2019 in which the Oakville, Ontario native shot 32% in his junior season. With the team starting off about as cold as you could get, losing all six games before the cancellation, Mackay believes that when the team hit MAAC play, the team’s fortunes would have turned around.

“I definitely saw us trending upward, we were kind of in a position where we really had nothing to lose. I wouldn’t say that we were getting desperate by any means but certainly at the Mac play coming along. We like I said before we were feeling really confident about our play. We had Marist the upcoming game, a team who we had just been defeated by in the MAAC Championship the year before so we knew anything could happen there, and we were definitely really looking forward to some MAAC play. But unfortunately, we never got the chance to get there.”

The shock of having the Bobcats season end was something that took some time for not only Mackay but the entire team to digest and fully comprehend. 

Like so many seniors who had their athletic careers cut short, the next step for these individuals is finding a real world job. But with Coronavirus still being a very prominent problem in the United States, former athletes, along with a slew of others have found it very hard, if not impossible to find companies that are hiring.

“After (school) it’s going to be looking for full time employment. I know the coronavirus and all that going on right now it’s been pretty difficult searching for a full time career but that’s what I’m going to be looking for. After this is all over.”

Unfortunately for Mackay, along with every other senior athlete at the school, Quinnipiac will not be accepting fifth year students back on campus in the upcoming 2020-2021 school year meaning whether Mackay wanted to come back and play (which he did), the school would not allow it.

Having an athletic career come to an end is always a tough pill to swallow. But for the class of 2020 it was made even worse by the complete lack of control that they had for their situation. However, looking down the road well past their college years, it’s a story that they will be able to tell the younger generations and give a little insight to the ever changing absurdity of the year 2020.