She pulled herself off the couch and paced though her body ached. She yelled at the TV and she yelled upstairs to her husband Andy, who wasn’t feeling that well himself, but was wearing a mask so he could care for their 6-year old son Matteo.
The Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year two of the past three seasons, Green had joined a select, but unwanted fraternity of celebrated college basketball coaches – Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Jim Boeheim, of Syracuse, Tennessee’s Rick Barnes, Baylor’s Scott Drew and many more – who had tested positive for COVID-19.
They, too, had been sidelined, as had football coaching standouts like Ohio State’s Ryan Day, Alabama’s Nick Saban, UCLA’s Chip Kelly and Les Miles of Kansas.
A day after the Morehead game – Thanksgiving Day – Green was just a half week into what would end up being an 11-day confinement in her basement .
“Andy cooked,” she said with a bit of a laugh. “He’s the chef in our house. I don’t cook, so it’s not like we were missing out on my famous cooking.
“I got my plate of food and ate my Thanksgiving meal down in the basement by myself. I couldn’t taste any of it. I’d lost my sense of taste and smell. And then I just spent the rest of the day down there alone.”
And for the first time – and the only time – in our 30-minute conversation on Friday, Green’s voice quivered a bit and nearly broke:
“The isolation part is real. It’s hard. I like communicating with people. I’m not used to being by myself that long.”
Nights were the worst. She couldn’t get comfortable, couldn’t sleep.
“I couldn’t lay this way or that and I couldn’t sit,” she said. “I know my body and it had never felt like this before. I just ached. My whole body hurt. I’ve got a bad back anyway and now it was killing me.”
But she said one of the toughest moments of this ordeal came just a few days ago when Matteo – his face masked, his feelings not – opened up to her:
“He said, ‘Mommy, when can I hug you and kiss you again?’
“I was like, ‘Oh geesh!’ It was cute and it was sad. It really kind of breaks your heart.”
The virus first put Green and her team in the emotional wringer last March, when – after winning both the A-10 regular season crown and the A-10 tournament title – the Flyers were awaiting their NCAA Tournament assignment when they saw the season shut down.
This preseason, as the Flyers readied for the uncertain year ahead, Green said she and Andy, who is a school teacher, took all the precautions they could. They wore masks, practiced social distancing and didn’t have gatherings in their home. Nor have they been in personal contact with their families back in Iowa.
At Flyers’ practice, Green, her assistant coaches, the players and other personnel were equally diligent she said.
Regardless, she started feeling ill after a team scrimmage on Sunday. Nov. 22.
“It hit really quickly,” she said. “I had a fever, a sore throat, all the symptoms and I just kind of knew. And right then I followed all the protocol and began to isolate.
“The next morning we were scheduled for one of our regular testings – we get tested three times a week – and I wasn’t surprised when I found out I was positive.
“That I had COVID.”
‘Going on adrenaline’
Her first two days at home she tried to work herself through her illness.
“I tried to navigate how we were going to prepare for our first game,” she said. “I did the film session (via Zoom) with the team and my staff and I talked to our administration about all the COVID protocols. Even though I wasn’t feeling great, I was busy non-stop those first two days.”
And then it hit her.
“Those first two days I think I was going on adrenaline, but then I realized I’ve really got to rest,” she said.
Soon Andy tested positive, as well – Matteo tested negative – and the Green family did its best to soldier through these strange, unsettling times.
Matteo turned out to be a real trouper.
“The few times I went upstairs, I was wearing a mask and he was, too,” Green said. “He knew and he was real cautious. He’d say: ‘Mommy, I can’t come by you now.’
“He understands that and the importance of masks and that it’s all because of COVID. And that’s crazy when you think about it. He’s just six. It’s kind of sad, too. But that’s the world we live in now.”
For some college coaches that world has been life-threatening and for some high school coaches around the nation it has been deadly.
Cleveland State’s women’s coach, Chris Kielsmeir, was one of the first coaches to contract COVID-19 and he ended up hospitalized and initially wondering if he was going to survive. Three months after he was released from the Cleveland Clinic’s Hillcrest Hospital, he said he still felt weak and constantly fatigued.
Green was buoyed by the efforts of her players.
“They were great,” she said. “We have such good, caring kids. They would text me and check in on me. They’d put a phone in the huddle and they’d all FaceTime me. They were awesome.”
Yet, all that attention from afar still didn’t temper the sense of isolation that would set in, especially at night.
“A week or so in I just had to get outside so I bundled up one night and walked down to the end of our block and back,” she said. “Then I just sat down on my front porch and looked out. I just needed fresh air.”
Back in action
Today, Green will be back on the sidelines as the Flyers meet Akron in their 2 p.m, home opener at UD Arena.
She first rejoined the team three days ago for practice.
“I really tried to be cautious,” she said. “I wore a mask and tried to distance myself. I didn’t give anyone a hug. I didn’t even touch the ball.
“But it felt great to be back. It was the best thing for me and made me feel like I’m on the upward, the right track.”
Yet, as she spoke of the tonic her team provides, she also showed the lingering effects of the virus. Every so often, her voice would give way to a cough.
That’s why, she said: “This is no time to let our guard down. We’ve got to wear masks and social distance. This virus is not something to play around with. It’s real. And I know I was lucky. A lot of people are getting really sick and ending up in the hospital.”
Keeping an entire team healthy in these debilitating times requires real commitment.
But Green said her players know what is at stake:
“They want this season so badly and they are doing everything they possibly can do to make it happen. We’ve had a couple of games cancelled already. They see how fragile this is.
“In our program we always preach just ‘playing possession by possession.’ I preach living in the moment and oh man, right now that has never been more true. We’re practicing what we preach. Right now, literally, it’s day to day for us.
“Each day we get that one practice, that one game and that’s all we know.
“We test three times a week and you never know what’s going to happen. If there’s a positive test, the whole thing gets shut down.”
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