With sports paused, life altered, athletes make do, make new

Parker Tuomie and his Minnesota State hockey team were thriving last season, pursuing the program's first NCAA Tournament victory with a fervor that suggested a bigger goal than that.

As the winter transpired, news from Tuomie's father coaching overseas about the virus outbreak portended a major roadblock lurking further down the path. First, the top-tier league in Tuomie's native Germany had banned postgame handshake lines. Then, the season was canceled.

“I knew that we weren't far away from that possibility,” Tuomie said, “but it did happen quicker than I thought it would.”

March 12, 2020, that tipping-point day of dread for so many as the dark clouds of COVID-19 drifted in, was the end of the run for the second-ranked Mavericks and their 31-5-2 record. The plug was pulled on the rest of the WCHA playoffs, then hours later on the entire NCAA Tournament. Tuomie and his teammates gathered for goodbyes to their national championship chase — and one another.

“A lot of tears were flowing. It was just a very emotional day,” said Tuomie, one of seven seniors on the 2019-20 squad. "Every year you have a feeling that you can do it, but right from the get-go we had that feeling that this was our year and we were going to be the first to do it.”

Life often strays from the preferred script, as much of the world was reminded by the pandemic.

By summertime, with opportunities to play professionally in the U.S. drying up, Tuomie was back in Germany. He signed with Eisbären Berlin in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga, where his dad is the head coach of a different team. This was a goal of his all along, not some last-ditch idea, but the way it unfolded wasn't ideal.

What a time he had on American ice, though. Three years of junior hockey. Four seasons at Minnesota...

source https://www.chron.com/news/article/With-sports-paused-life-altered-athletes-make-16024870.php