Berkshire County's college football players react to not having a 2020 season

Sean McCormack said it has been a long time since he hasn’t had a football season.

“This has been the first time since I was, I would say in first grade, that I haven’t had a season of sports,” the wide receiver at St. Lawrence University said. “In high school, I played basketball, football and lacrosse. I’ve been playing wide receiver my freshman and sophomore year. Having my season canceled was super-weird for me, because I’ve never not been playing a sport and been active.”

The Division I-FBS level of college football has, for the most part, had games this fall. Most of the other two NCAA Divisions did not.

So, while Pittsfield native Jake Hescock played at D-I FBS Central Florida, first-year Ben Harding did not get to play in his inaugural season at Division I-FCS Harvard. And a number of other Berkshire County football players had their seasons canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

McCormack, a three-sport athlete during his time at Mount Greylock, was heading into his junior season at St. Lawrence, where he is teammates with fellow former Mountie Reece Gillette, a defensive lineman. The Saints were 5-5 and 3-3 in the Liberty League during 2019. McCormack played in seven games and made 13 catches for 138 yards. Twice McCormack had four catches in a game. He had four catches for 40 yards in a win over Utica and four for 43 in a victory over Hartwick. Gillette played in eight games and made nine tackles as a sophomore.

The former Mounties play for Dan Puckharber, who was named head coach at St. Lawrence when Mark Raymond was hired away from the Canton, N.Y., school to take over as the head coach at Williams College. George McCormack, Sean’s father, is the longtime men’s lacrosse coach at Williams.

Sean McCormack said he’s taking the spring semester off at St. Lawrence, so he can take advantage of the additional year of eligibility the NCAA is granting all fall sport athletes.

“Overall, it’s been kind of sad because I really miss the whole team atmosphere,” said McCormack, when reached by phone in Colorado Springs, Colo., where he and several of his St. Lawrence teammates have been taking remote classes from. “It’s a big part of my life.”

Being away from campus since the pandemic hit, McCormack did say that Coach Puckharber and his staff had set up some workouts for players on campus.

“But it wasn’t anything close to how it would have been,” McCormack said. “It would have been in groups, all the different position groups would work together, but the whole team was never really together. I don’t think the weight room was open at St. Lawrence. I definitely miss working out with my team, and just getting better every day.”

Some college football players stayed home during the fall semester, learning remotely. Dane Campbell, a junior at Massachusetts Maritime, said he just returned from campus in Buzzards Bay. As a leader on campus, the former Wahconah player had to supervise a number of cadets, and could only do that on the Cape Cod campus.

“We did have practice, only in the mornings because everyone had different schedules. We had practice from 6 until about 7:30 in the morning,” Campbell said. “It was weird. I wish we had full contact and everything. We’d run routes, practice some plays and that was about it.”

Campbell had been looking forward to playing this fall after his 2019 season was shortened because of a broken ankle. He only played in four games as a wide receiver for coach Jeremy Cameron. He had 11 catches for 81 yards. That included a 6-catch, 31-yard day in a 31-7 loss to Westfield State.

“Football, for me, is always an outlet. It’s a time for me to get out my energy and just let loose and have fun,” said Campbell, whose father Gary Jr., is the head coach at Wahconah. “Unfortunately, this year, I was unable to do that. We didn’t have football.”

The Mass. Maritime receiver said Cameron and the football staff have been active on Zoom calls, texting and the like. He said that he saw his position coaches every day.

Campbell, however, is not going to take advantage of the extra season.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love football,” he said. “Senior year, I can’t wait to get out on the field if we’re able to get out there. It’s almost been bittersweet for me, with my breaking my ankle and being out for the rest of the season. I haven’t played in almost a year and a half now.”

One of Dane Campbell’s former teammates at Wahconah said he is hopeful that there will be some spring football in his future.

“In the spring, we are hoping that we are going to have a season or at least a few games,” Endicott College receiver Will Genaway said. “Right now, it looks like we might get a couple of scrimmages in or a few games, depending on how the pandemic is going.

“It’s unlikely we will have a full season.”

Genaway said he will consider either staying at Endicott to earn a Masters Degree and finish out his football career, or go elsewhere to study, but that’s not determined yet. He noted, however, that he would only continue playing football for the Gulls.

“There’s still a lot of stuff up in the air,” he said. “I’m meeting with my advisor to talk about that. As of right now, I’m going to come back in the spring.”

A Business Management major at Endicott, Genaway said he will be back on the Beverly campus in the spring.

Genaway’s Gulls finished 9-2 and won the 2019 New England Bowl, beating Dean College 52-10. Genaway caught a two-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter and ended up with three catches for 37 yards. On the season, he caught 19 passes for 218 yards and five touchdowns.

Genaway is an Endicott teammate of former Taconic player Anthony Whiteley. Whiteley led Endicott with 500 yards rushing on 105 carries and had five touchdowns.

“We didn’t have games” in the fall, Genaway said. “We were lucky because our president allowed us to have practice following the guidelines. The first couple of weeks, it was no helmets and no shoulder pads, just shorts and T-shirts running around and conditioning. Then going into pods, so there were four different practice groups with 30-40 kids in each group. Then we had to split up in the field in 10 groups and stay in those groups for two or three weeks at the beginning of the year. A second phase was shoulder pads and helmets and then finally we were able to, for a couple of weeks, get together and practice pretty normally with hitting. The younger guys got a chance to scrimmage against each other.

“Unfortunately, the last three weeks of the semester, as things started to ramp up with the pandemic, we had to shut it down and go back to the first phase.”

A first-year student-athlete will have to wait until next fall to begin his football career.

“In a way, you were able to adjust easier because you had more free time, so you could figure out where everything was. You could meet new people and you spent more time with people,” Trinity’s Cal Messina said. “Since I was in a quad with three other freshman football players, we spent a lot of time with each other. I guess that’s the only plus I really liked out of it. You also had more time to get work done because you weren’t practicing and meeting.

“I would have much rather been playing football.”

Messina is a graduate of Mount Greylock and spent a post-grad year at Williston-Northampton School. He was looking to start playing last fall, and would have had a visit to Williamstown because the Bantams were due to travel to play at Williams in 2020.

Messina said that while he did not get to play a game in 2020, he will be more prepared for the 2021 season.

“We were able to learn the system much more,” said the future Bantam running back, one of 37 first-years on the campus in Hartford, Conn. “We were practicing, I think, three times a week — four if you were at a certain position, and I was one of those. We had to learn all the plays and every day we would go over a different play, a different formation or a different concept that would help us pick it up quicker. We didn’t have to game plan at all. Although it was weirder because you couldn’t go against the defense, I definitely got a really good grasp of the playbook.

“That was super helpful and will give us an upper hand going into next season.”