Web Only: Jeff Greer’s column

It’s not easy coming back to a sport after a tragedy. No one ever said it should or would be…. It’s not easy coming back to a sport after a tragedy. No one ever said it should or would be.

I couldn’t believe my soccer coach held soccer practice on Sept. 11, 2001. Just six hours prior to soccer practice kicking off, two planes hurtled into the World Trade Center in New York City. Another crashed into the Pentagon. A fourth plane came down in Shanksville, Pa., about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Family members related to some teachers and students attending my high school in Rhode Island were killed in the attacks. My English teacher, whose brother-in-law died in the World Trade Center, didn’t return to work for weeks. When she came back, she was still sad, but a determination to keep on keeping on propelled her.

So imagine the tremendous toil felt in the hearts of Virginia Tech’s baseball team, determined to play days after the largest school shooting ever consumed a campus in the heart of western Virginia. How could those players play a game after the grim, harsh realities of life had taken center stage just days before? Three quarters of a year later, basketball players at Northern Illinois surely asked the same question: How could they play a game Tuesday, just 12 days after a gunman killed five people before taking his own life?

They were focused on moving on. Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois weren’t going to stay down, just like New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., weren’t going to stay down.

In this American culture, a society blood-soaked by violence, we shrug off shootings, murders and bombs miles away. They don’t impact us unless we know someone involved. It’s like a light switch. We don’t turn it on unless we feel the need to.

When a gunman tore through the curtains in a lecture at Northern Illinois on Valentine’s Day, the lights came on in DeKalb, Ill. It didn’t matter if the 17 players on the Northern Illinois men’s basketball team and the 12 players on the Northern Illinois women’s basketball team knew someone shot that day or not, the shooting happened to each Northern Illinois affiliate.

It affected everyone. It had to.

So to dredge up the desire to put on their white jerseys with the red-and-black trim took a lot of determination and pride. Donning their gear meant they were not going to let someone’s cruel act keep them down.

And it doesn’t matter that the men lost to Western Michigan, 56-49. And it won’t matter what the result of last night’s game between the Northern Illinois and Western Michigan women was, either.

At the end of the day, the results come and go, the games are played and the student-athletes and their classmates move on, but to those deeply affected by the tragedies at their schools or in their towns, playing the game means more than just suiting up and getting results.

It shows that they can rise again and return to their normal lives. It shows they couldn’t be kept down by one person’s selfish, unsolicited, horrifying and inexplicable act.

With a heavy heart, let’s get to the rapid fire.