Adia Barnes is grateful for many things these days.
She’s the mother of two children, 5-year-old Matteo and 12-week-old Capri.
Everyone is healthy. Her team is playing basketball.
Yet more challenges arise by the day. The latest: traveling during a pandemic.
“It’s manageable,” Barnes said, “but it’s very tough.”
The sixth-ranked Wildcats are chartering a plane to this weekend’s trip, which begins Friday with a game at Colorado. Without access to a charter, Barnes said, the Wildcats might not be playing at all.
“I just appreciate (UA athletic director) Dave (Heeke) so much for valuing our team and understanding what’s going on and giving us the best chance to play,” Barnes said. “We’ve been lucky — knock on wood — to not have any situations. … I am thankful; I know it costs a lot of money. I don’t take that for granted at all. It just gives us our best chance (to play).”
Chartering a plane should make for an easy in and out. No more getting home after midnight, 10 hours after a game ends. No sitting in an airport – especially now, where others may not be following the same protocols as Arizona.
It doesn’t help that Colorado and Utah are COVID-19 hot spots. “The infection rates are very high. It’s a little bit scary,” Barnes said.
Travel might be easier, but the games will be just as tough. The Wildcats split February’s mountain trip, winning at Utah before falling at Colorado. Star guard Aari McDonald missed both games with an injury and Cate Reese required a trip to the hospital.
This year brings another set of obstacles. Utah defeated a then-ranked No. 15 Oregon State earlier this season, then turned around and lost by 30 points to Colorado Both the Buffaloes and Utes are 1-2 in Pac-12 Conference play.
A different routine
Road trips this season come with extra layers of logistics and protocols. The Wildcats won’t be allowed to sightsee or shop; there are no more team meals in restaurants, either.
“You’re more isolated,” Barnes said. “You stay in your pods. If you have a roommate, you stay with a roommate in the hotel — on the plane, you’re still with that person. I hope you really like your roommate, and you like your person because you’ll be with them for days … in a hotel room not doing much.
“It’s just challenging because of those things. It’s harder I think psychologically and just mentally for the student athletes, but it’s also the situation right now.”
Barnes keeps preaching the same message she’s shared with her team throughout the pandemic: control what you can control.
“We talk a lot about controlling the controllable and make the best of it,” she said. “We’re going to try to find a big conference room and watch a movie or play games or do something we can do to make it a little bit less stressful for the student athletes. ...
“If you asked everybody, ‘Would you do that, or would you not play?’ they would all say, ‘We’d do that.’ Everybody wants to play. I’m blessed that we’re playing, because we could be like another conference and they could say, ‘We’re shutting everything down,’ but (the Pac-12) allowing us to play. So I’m just grateful for that.”
Barnes is bringing baby Capri on the road with her, a fact that makes the coach a little anxious.
“I think not only as a coach, but as a mom with an infant, traveling during COVID during a pandemic is very nerve-wracking,” she said.
1,099 and counting
Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer broke Pat Summit’s record for most wins in Division I women’s basketball Tuesday night, collecting her 1,099th career victory.
Barnes used the words “legend” and “trailblazer” to describe her Pac-12 peer.
“For her to sustain his success for so many years, it’s just remarkable and very hard to do,” Barnes said. VanDerveer is “very difficult to coach against. Her team always plays well. They run a lot of difficult things — she’s just a great basketball mind.
“The things that I really love about Tara — she’s someone I can call any time. I called her last week. I can call her and ask her opinion about something or ask for her input and she’ll always be honest — it’s not to benefit Stanford, because we’re competing. It’s just for the truth. I really love that about her. She supports women’s basketball, she promotes women’s basketball, and she does everything the right way. I think she’s phenomenal.
“I think she’s one of the greatest of all time. I think she’s done so much to change the game. … I’m so happy that it’s her, because she does things the right way.”
Barnes played against VanDerveer’s Stanford teams in the late 1990s. She said she enjoyed the springy court in the old Maples Pavilion.
“We could all jump higher … they had springs under their court,” Barnes said. “You could literally sit on the court and if you had a cup of water on the court it would bounce and shake. … We’d be touching the rim, because I couldn’t touch the rim anywhere else.”
