Rebels' Tribune: Terka Janatova
Rebels' Tribune features the voices of Ole Miss student-athletes detailing how their experiences have changed since the coronavirus pandemic upended lives both on campus and around the globe. . Earlier this week, Ole Miss Women's Tennis senior Tereza Janatova and her two classmates announced they would all be returning for another season thanks to the NCAA eligibility waiver. In the letter below, Janatova reflects on the few days surrounding the cancelation of her final season.
We were in the middle of spring break, just starting our SEC season, when I received a phone call from my parents about the schools being cancelled at home. The next day, the government of the Czech Republic issued a state of emergency, forbidding public events, travelling, and later, even free movement. Despite all of this happening in Europe, the United States was still functioning normally, so my team and I met in front of the indoor facility just before five am on March 12th to get on the road for another SEC weekend. Having mixed feelings about playing without fans, we were still really excited for our matches against LSU and Texas A&M that weekend. We had been playing really really well and things were just heating up.
When we landed in Dallas and while waiting for our connection to Baton Rouge, several of us discovered statements about other NCAA conferences postponing, or even cancelling their spring sport seasons. A few hours later, we landed in Baton Rouge, and our coach announced that he had just gotten a message that the Southeastern Conference suspended all competition until March 30. Every single one of us, not just the seniors, was shocked and destroyed by that message. We were just quietly sitting in the baggage area of Baton Rouge airport, waiting to collect our bags and for our coaches to get mini-vans to drive back to Oxford. A few hours later, about halfway through our drive, the statement from NCAA popped on our phones about cancelling all remaining spring National Championships until June, to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
It is hard to describe what was going through my mind in that moment.
It is crazy how a few hours can turn around everything so quickly, going from being excited and full of joy about playing the sport you love and being able to represent your school, to tears and being so devastated from an early end of your senior season. It has been an emotional rollercoaster. All three of us seniors obviously had no words and were just trying to process what had happened. We were having a good season so far; we had beaten #14 UCF just a few weeks ago, and we were really pumped for the upcoming SEC season and believed that we would achieve great things.
Many thoughts were going through my head during that six hour drive back home. Remembering all the fun moments, team victories, and happy memories from the past five years as a Rebel. As a red-shirt senior, also recalling the difficult moments that led to these: months of preparation, tough losses, and being sidelined and injured for several months, multiple times. Having spent countless hours in the training room for rehab and recovery taught me to enjoy every bit of playing and to never take anything for granted because you are not guaranteed that you will be playing tomorrow. That is why I had so much fun competing along my teammates this year, feeling honored to put the school uniform on every single day.
Throughout the year, not completely sure about my future, I was slowly preparing for the next step. I had applied for several graduate programs in engineering. However, not quite ready to be done with tennis forever, I also considered either continuing to play on the tour or coaching as a graduate assistant, while completing my master’s degree. All of a sudden, with the season being cancelled, I had no idea what to do. Several hours and days passed, full of desperate thoughts, sleepless nights. On March 30th, the NCAA released a statement that all spring sport athletes, especially us seniors, were really happy to see. They announced that all spring-sport athletes would be granted another season of eligibility, which was the first piece of great news after several weeks.
I was already back home in the Czech Republic at that time, as I had decided to go home to be with my family during this time. Keeping myself occupied with course work, working in the garden and trying to maintain my fitness level, my thoughts were always going back to one word: tennis. When can I start playing again? Will I be able to compete again?
I love Oxford and the community. I have a great team around me, awesome teammates, coaches, trainers, advisors, and other support staff at Ole Miss. Ending my career like this? Unacceptable. I have unfinished business as a Rebel; I believe that our team has huge potential to do great things. With that being said, I am super excited to announce that I will be coming back for my sixth year and competing for the Rebels one more time next season, Hotty Toddy!