Just days after the NCAA Division I Council voted to grant spring-sport student-athletes an extra year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic, West Virginia assistant baseball coach and recruiting coordinator Steve Sabins spoke with WVSports.com about how the pandemic has affected the program.

In part one of two of this Q&A, Sabins discusses how the team found out about the season being cancelled, what the conversations have been like with current players, his thoughts on the D1 Council's vote and much more.

WVSports.com: How are things currently? What are you doing with the free time you have?

Sabins: Yeah I think there’s so much unknown. I haven’t had a ton of free time lately with the current and new legislation that came out. We have kids that are committed in ninth grade and 10th grade and 11th grade and 12th grade, so you can imagine there’s a little bit of fear, a little bit of panic, a little bit of unknown from parents and recruits and select ball coaches and high school coaches. I think people usually tend to think the worst. So having a lot of conversations, been on the phone for about three consecutive days for a lot of hours just answering questions and doing the best we can to help fix the situation.

WVSports.com: Just the timeline of everything unfolding, you guys were about to face Texas Tech in a big series that gets cancelled and soon after you see all the conference basketball tournaments get cancelled, NCAA, the NBA. Just kind of take me through, when did you first get the news and how did things escalate from there?

Sabins: Yeah, it was Thursday morning. We had packed up, we were eating breakfast at Monongalia County Ballpark and we were getting on the bus and right before we got on the bus, we saw on ESPN that the NBA season had been either postponed or cancelled, and so as we get on the bus everybody’s talking about it and we’re going, ‘I’m not sure they’re going to let college baseball go on if they’re not letting the NBA go on,’ and then keep bouncing ideas off each other. We’re saying I don’t think anybody wants to take the risk of getting on a flight right now, and I don’t think anybody wants to take the responsibility of directing a team to get on a bus right now that’s headed to the airport. So we’re headed to the airport and we’re going to play Texas Tech and I think we’re about an hour down the road, maybe 15-20 minutes away from the airport is when we got the call to turn the bus around and so obviously a surreal moment. You’re literally packing up your uniform to go play and then the bus is turned around an hour and a half later so I don’t know if we were shocked by the decision, more just surprised that this has become a reality.

WVSports.com: When did you get word that everything was cancelled? Not just that series but the entire season overall?

Sabins: There were so many big moments that I think if you would’ve been told that the season was cancelled originally you would’ve known exactly what time it was and what day, and where you were standing, but it was just one traumatic announcement after another and the unknown after another. So I couldn’t tell you when we found out that our actual season was cancelled but when we found out that the series had been cancelled, and then we found out that the NBA had been cancelled and there were some more positive tests that were sweeping through the nation, I think all of us started to do a little bit more research and understand what had been happening in other countries and trying to predict what would happen. So I don’t know where I was or when it was when we found out the season was cancelled, but at that point I think it became a little bit expected and started connecting dots and saying this thing might last a little bit longer than initially thought.

WVSports.com: Has (the season ending) set in yet for you coaches and maybe the seniors?

Sabins: I don’t know if it has really set in. I think since that day happened, all of the sudden you go into end of the season mode and that means taking care of your kids and your roster and it’s really bizarre, but in March we’re having exit meetings. And so you’re talking to kids about the season and their future and our roster moving forward. So all of the sudden you go from really in that compete mode, I was on the bus watching pitchers for Texas Tech, evaluating who we’re going to face and then literally 24 hours later, we’re having exit meetings because kids are leaving campus. So I don’t know if it’s really set in. I haven’t ever been the kind of person to explore the emotional side too much just because I know that there’s a lot of people that are really struggling that have real problems and real financial issues and real health issues. And so although it’s a very large deal, obviously we worked really hard to put ourselves in a situation to be successful and our kids work so hard at a goal, I think it’s just very important to remember that we get to do something that’s such a huge privilege. We get to play baseball and play sports and coach kids and it’s a dream job for the coaches, it’s a dream job for the kids. And so I haven’t really explored the emotional side too much. I’m not letting myself go there quite yet, I’m still trying to manage rosters and talk to people and handle other people’s feelings and emotions and issues and then maybe once this thing dies down on our side a little bit, you start looking at the season and how we did and what could’ve been, but haven’t gotten there quite yet.

WVSports.com: Did most of the players go home? Do you still have players in Morgantown? Are you having Zoom meetings, keeping up with them and what they’re up to?

Sabins: Yeah, exactly. Almost everybody is at home. There’s a few players that are still in Morgantown. There’s specifically a player that is rehabbing from a Tommy John surgery that he had over a year ago and he’s still having to have treatments with the trainer that are scheduled at our stadium. But yeah, that’s what this whole week has kinda been about. The Big 12 came out with legislation about how many hours per week that you could do video conferencing with your team and what is allowed inside of those video conferences and what you can and can’t do on a compliance standpoint to provide for your kids, and so this week is when we’ve been getting organized. We’ve talked to all of our kids a lot just on phone calls and text messages and things like that, but this is the first week where we’re starting to organize and saying how can we make sure that our kids are being productive and still working towards goals and more important than preparing for baseball or training for competition, just giving guys a sense of value and a direction with their schedule and things to look forward to, and I think that might be as important as anything currently.

WVSports.com: What are some of those conversations like with current players? Is it just strictly from a health standpoint making sure they’re OK (and) they haven’t been affected, that they’re maybe trying to stay in shape and stuff like that?

Sabins: Yeah, exactly. We wanna talk to guys about their strength, about their speed, about their weight, about their families, about how they’re feeling, what’s their situation at home, is the virus really affecting their area, have they been able to get outside, their emotional health. Trying to just have conversations with guys because we have to be sensitive that there are particular players, we have somebody that’s from New York City, there’s particular players that may not have been outside for four, five, six, seven days, couple weeks. So there’s some guys that are probably battling some issues right now so more than anything being there for him and letting them know that we’re going to get through this and we’re going to get over it and we’re going to be better than ever and in the meantime, let’s talk a little bit of baseball and let’s talk some strength and conditioning and let’s talk some development side, just to talk baseball and talk shop and get our mind off of what’s been going on. I think all of us are going through that a little bit, is how do we find this sense of normalcy moving forward?

WVSports.com: Prior to the vote, were you hearing anything in regards to how that vote could go as far as whether or not they do grant another year of eligibility for everybody, but (also) the logistics?

Sabins: Yes, I think before the vote there was basically three options that had been presented and then a lot of things that would go with each option. But the options appeared to be: Grant nobody an additional year of eligibility, grant seniors only an additional year of eligibility or grant all players an additional year of eligibility, and with each one of those options comes some different consequences, and so I think coaches had kinda gone back-and-forth on those three options and what they would need and what would the trickle down effect would be and how current student athletes, how current athletic departments and how incoming players would be affected.

WVSports.com: What was your overall reaction to the vote? (The D1 Council voted to grant all spring-sport student-athletes an extra year of eligibility and allowed programs to determine how much scholarship and aid returning seniors would get if they decided to return)

Sabins: A positive one. I think it was really player-centered, and it gave student-athletes the freedom to do what they wanted with their playing careers. So I think it was absolutely based around student-athletes and their well-being.

WVSports.com: In regards to the roster cap, the roster cap has been lifted, is that just for the 2021 season?

Sabins: Correct. I think there’s still a lot of things that need to be figured out, and I think you’re getting really close to what the issue is going to be long-term. There is going to be a roster limit, but it’s going to exempt the seniors, so we still have to have a 35-man roster within our freshmen to juniors, but the seniors will be exempt and the seniors won’t count towards scholarship allotment that we have, so that’s a good fix for this next year although there could be very large rosters, there could be incoming players that were expecting to fill somebody’s role that was going to leave and that’s no longer going to happen. But after next season, all of the sudden you need to be able to fit the five classes into four years without having any roster exemptions, that’s when rosters and situations could be bad in our sport as far as putting it on coaches and athletic departments to make really hard decisions about incoming players or about kids that are currently on the roster. That’s just the facts.

WVSports.com: Definitely some tough roster management decisions ahead in the next year or two as well?

Sabins: Correct. And then we’re in such fantastic shape. We couldn’t be in better shape in the country. We have three seniors on our team and four juniors so we were one of the youngest teams in all of the power five and so imagine having eight seniors and seven juniors, the MLB draft is now potentially being moved from 40 rounds to 5-10 rounds and so a lot of expected juniors will be coming back to school. Many seniors that were off the hypothetical books will be coming back to school and so your rosters would be much, much larger in those scenarios. We just happen to be at a really fortunate situation in that we are extremely young so we just won’t have nearly the issues that across the country programs are going to have in super large numbers and it’s already starting to show a little bit. It’s already starting to trickle with the transfer portal and high school kids that are being told there’s no longer availability for you in our program and you’re starting to hear that buzz from agents and transfer portal and select ball coaches that that’s going to be building here over the next couple months.

In part two, Sabins addresses the status of the team's seniors, how this entire situation will affect future recruiting classes and more.

WATCH: Musings from the Mountains Episode 73 | Hammond Russell Commitment Reaction and WVU Baseball

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