By R.V. Baugus
“Hey, R.V., it’s Rachel at the Alamodome. Where are you?”
Two long-time friends and I had started our drive from Dallas to San Antonio the morning of March 12 to enjoy what had become a new tradition — watching the Texas boys’ state high school basketball tournament. We had already discussed plenty on our drive, including the decision made by the National Basketball Association just the night before to suspend its season. We knew that many meetings and conventions had either canceled or postponed around the country as COVID-19 coronavirus had made its way into the United States. I shared with my friends the impact our public assembly venue industry would face in terms of lost events that may or may not be rescheduled. As we drove, we already knew that even the tournament we were going to see that brings in 24 teams and communities from around the state to participate in six classifications in semifinals and then championships would be witnessed only by fans who had pre-purchased tickets and that no tickets would be sold at the box office to help keep the crowd attendance and thus any risk of coronavirus lower. At the time, the NCAA said it would operate its March Madness with games played but no fans inside the venues. It all sounded so surreal.
Back to Rachel’s question. As the awesome administrative assistant to the awesome Alamodome General Manager 
Steve Zito, Rachel Arredondo’s question immediately sent my mind into two options before I even replied. One, her question was asked to tell us that wherever we were at on our drive to continue on down I-35 toward San Antonio. The second option was the more realistic one to me, that the tournament was going to operate under a vastly different set of circumstances or perhaps be canceled or postponed.
“We just drove past Waco and headed toward Temple,” I answered, an indication that we were still at least a couple of hours from San Antonio, depending on notorious I-35 traffic.
Sure enough, Rachel began confirming option two for me.
“Steve is in a meeting with the UIL (University Interscholastic League, which oversees Texas high school athletics) right now deciding whether to cancel the rest of the tournament,” she said. “I’ll call you again as soon as I know for sure.”
We took a quick yay-or-nay vote and decided that the guys’ trip was still on and that we would push onward to San Antonio. Before reaching Austin, Rachel phoned once more to share that, indeed, the remainder of the tournament was canceled.
We reached Austin and went to Matt’s El Rancho for some Mexican food. We were seated in an area near the bar with four or five televisions surrounding us tuned to sports programming. Aside from us, four young male business professionals were seated nearby and riveted to THE PLAYERS Championship golf tournament that sufficed as the lone, live sports event being shown on all the televisions. As we munched down chips, the nearby guys yelled out, “Come back!” a phrase that called into a hit golf ball finding reverse spin to come back closer to the cup. Or, it could have been a plea from anyone working at the restaurant toward any exiting patron on a day when it did seem that business was lighter than normal at this iconic establishment.
We later arrived at the La Quinta Medical Center location in San Antonio and upon walking to the elevators noticed a television in the dining area tuned to one of the news channels covering everything coronavirus. It would prove to be how we spent quite a bit of our own time while at the hotel, just watching news and hearing reports that sounded surreal at the time only to have another layer of news piled on top that was even more jaw-dropping.
Just the previous Sunday at church, our pastor delivered a message dealing with fear. Now, five days later, I got to put that message into practice, as did we all. I believe in the importance of striking a balance as best as possible between taking common-sense precautions with our health and listening to those more expert than me to give me some solid principles and advice. I also do not think it is healthy to take a “sky is falling” attitude. To better understand the latter, try buying bottled water, sanitizer, wipes, or toilet tissue at your neighborhood store. Chances are you can’t, because if your community is like mine, none of those products remain on shelves.
When normally we would wake up on Friday morning in San Antonio excited to drive over to the Alamodome to watch the Class 2A semifinals that start at 8:30 a.m., there was no such urgency, so it was an opportunity to sleep in some.
Crystal Howard is a friend who has worked for years at this particular La Quinta location, and prior to heading out for lunch we saw Crystal and got some of her take on the situation. She said (not surprisingly) that the hotel industry already felt the crunch caused by guest cancellations that in many cases were caused by event cancellations. The trickle-down effect was in full force and once again reminded me of the impact in our very own association and membership.
Later that afternoon, I made may way over to the Alamodome to try and see Steve Zito. His schedule, like many of yours, had to have been incredibly chaotic in having last-minute meetings and making some very critical decisions or being at least a party to those decisions. Sure enough, Steve was just about on his way out the office door for a meeting elsewhere in the venue, but still shared with me some of his last 24 hours.
Steve revealed that all the schools and coaches were on board with the revised lower-attendance seating decision. He had also returned to his office late the previous night to be in conversations about Fiesta San Antonio, the city’s biggest annual event scheduled for April that had been postponed until November due to the pandemic. The 11-day party generates more than $340 million in economic impact to the community.
Wednesday became Thursday, and in addition to the NBA announcing its suspension on Wednesday night and the NCAA changing its status from “attendance with essential personnel only” to cancellation of March Madness, Steve found himself in more meetings around the noon hour once again with the UIL to discuss the tournament even as its third game was in progress below on the Alamodome basketball court.
And so, like its counterparts at the collegiate and professional level, the boys’ state high school basketball tournament would conclude once that third game between Dallas Madison and Coldspring-Oakhurst finished. There remains a possibility of continuing the tournament at some point, but that is a conversation and meeting for another day, not while the stoked fires of coronavirus are trying to be extinguished around the country.
We spent one last night in one of the greatest cities anywhere before driving back to Dallas on Saturday. Such a drive on I-35 means one more trip through traffic-snarled Austin, but that was not the case this particular day. This was to be the weekend in Austin for the South by Southwest Festival, an event that generates millions for the city’s economy and in fact helped lead to the basketball tournament moving from Austin to San Antonio just a few years earlier.
But on this day and this weekend there would be no SXSW in Austin, no crazy traffic, no energy generated by crowds and by events, the very things that make our business pop. No, it would be a pretty uneventful drive back home while we all awaited the next batch of coronavirus news to come along.
Photos: The Alamodome’s new court got in only three games before tournament play was halted, while outside on the marquee facing I-10, a most practical message was delivered.
