Why Vanderbilt women's basketball decided to end season after only 8 games

They tried.

Again and again, they tried so hard to make it work.

Like most athletes around the country, the players on the Vanderbilt women's basketball team were so happy back in November to be finally playing again after all of the COVID-19 cancellations and delays since March.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the Commodores to be dealt one serious setback after another. And although they were determined to fight and scrap and claw to keep going, even that much fight just wasn't enough.

Too many injuries, too many missing players, and too much COVID did the team in.

So last week, the Vanderbilt women made the painful decision to shut down their season. Just eight games in.

Vanderbilt joined other Division I programs such as Duke and Virginia, SMU and Cal State Northridge that have also canceled their women's basketball seasons.

Done. Finished.

"It's been really, really tough," Vanderbilt coach Stephanie White said. "Everyone is feeling so conflicted. We all want to play and participate, but at the same time, we all understand the very difficult position we were in."

The Commodores, who had six of their first 14 games either canceled or postponed due to COVID issues, were missing multiple players to season-ending injuries, or to opt-out decisions made before or during the season.

They were down to just seven players, one of whom was working her way back from a season-ending ACL injury from last year, when they finally made the decision to shut down with a 4-4 record.

"At that point, when we got down to seven, it just seemed so deflating for the team," said White, who led Purdue to the NCAA national championship in 1999 and got one of her first coaching jobs as an assistant coach with the Chicago Sky from 2007 to 2010. "To try to prepare for SEC play with just seven kids ... that's really rough.

"When we lost that last player to fall to seven kids, it just seemed like that was really the last straw for everybody."

White says that her players initiated a discussion about a possible shutdown and that the entire team and staff talked it through. No one was rooting for a shutdown, but everyone was realistic about the obstacles that the team would face moving forward with such limited manpower.

"Everyone is feeling the stress of COVID with all of the adjustments to schedules and the protocols and one day you're in rhythm and then all of a sudden, you're out of rhythm. It's a lot for adults to handle, and it's even more so for the players," White said. "I think our players really wanted to keep playing. Not just for the physical part of it, but for the mental and emotional part, too. That's their socialization. They need that. You want some kind of normalcy that you're familiar with.

"But each time something else happened and someone else went down or opted out, the discussion of 'Can we actually do this?' came up and we had to talk it through."

White says that her younger self might not have fully understood the apprehensions of her players.

But her current self gets it without hesitation. She's a parent now, after all, to three boys under the age of 10, Landon, 9, and 7-year-old twins Avery and Aiden.

"You want to compete, you want to get better. I mean, this is what we do," White said. "But I'm also a parent, and I have anxiety about my own kids going to school and playing sports. I am now seeing it from that perspective, so I have all the respect for everything my players are feeling.

"This is a very scary time and even though you want to see your child do what they love, you also want them to feel safe and secure."

Twitter: @babcockmcgraw