Basketball has been hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Indoor gyms have been shut while the nature of the sport hasn’t allowed for anything more than some basic outdoor drills in between lockdowns.
The West Lothian Wolves are a club of close to 250 players across a range of youth and senior age groups and a community – if you include parents and volunteers – of over 600 people.
They have put an emphasis on mental health during lockdown, appointing a well-being ambassador.
With restrictions easing, the club will take tentative steps at first as they look to welcome their players back.
Club chairman Paul Meldrum, well-being ambassador Aiden Gallagher and under-18 women’s player Sally Campbell spoke to the Courier about the struggles over the last 12 months from a club and player perspective and how they are set to tackle their return.
Aiden reflects on the special moments those within the club have missed out on since March last year, saying: “You’re talking 600 people who make up the fabric of the Wolves community.
“They’ve all been impacted differently and have all coped and dealt with lockdown differently.
“There will be varying hours put into the club within that, but some have gone from it being a main part of their life to not having it and that’s very difficult.
“The impact can be huge because the game is a constant in their life.”
He continued: “I think our players have been robbed of some of their shared experiences.
“For the under-16 boys, we trained on the Thursday night for the play-off semi-final on the Saturday and the season got cancelled on the Friday.
“We left the session with all that fire and togetherness and determination to reach the final – and then 24 hours later it was cancelled.
“It was the right decision, absolutely no doubt about that in hindsight but they missed out on a chance to be national champions.
“We were meant to be going to Madrid two months after that for a tournament as well which would have been their first trip away.
“They’ve also missed out on a year of social development.”
Sally, who also represents Scotland at youth level was by her own admission training ‘excessive’ amounts prior to lockdown and describes the challenges of going to nothing overnight.
“Before the pandemic, I was training twice a week with the Wolves, once with my school and potentially two games at the weekend, and then Scotland on top of that which could be six hours at a time,” she said.
“I was training excessive amounts and was really busy and then overnight went to nothing.
“It was really hard, obviously, from the aspect of not seeing your pals and team-mates but also because you just had nothing to do.
“I had to switch myself from that to making sure I was prepared for when we did go back.
“Fitness levels can drop quickly. I was actually injured just before lockdown and it took me a month to get back to running and that month was awful.
“There was a big drop-off in fitness levels. It was a real struggle, mentally and physically, to get back after that.”
There was a sense, she admits, during the first lockdown, that they would be back training quite quickly. That meant the motivation was there to make sure she kept fit.
Once lockdown came back a second time in December, though, she says it was a different story.
There was frustration, too, at the rustiness she displayed on the court when they were able to train outdoors for a brief spell during the summer months. She said: “I was really motivated during the first lockdown.
“I don’t think I’ve ever ran so much in my life. I feel like at that point, a lot of people’s mental health was good because you had a real focus.
“You obviously weren’t having the contact and playing games but people were still hopeful because they thought it would be over quickly in the summer and you’d get back playing.
“At the beginning there was a lot of motivation and then when we were able to get back into training, that’s when the hope really started to come in. Then you realised that nothing was going to happen. There was no end product of the training because there was no games.
“Obviously training and physical fitness is a good thing, but you do that so you can play games.
“I got to my first session back and was really excited. During the first lockdown I was working hard, shooting and running. Then I got back on court and it felt like I’d done nothing.
“You couldn’t do what you wanted and what you expected. You physically couldn’t do the moves because you hadn’t been doing them against someone else. You’d been out running and taking shots by yourself.
“It was difficult to deal with because you were getting frustrated by not being able to do what you knew you could before lockdown.”
She added: “The second lockdown was awful. That’s when I started to see some of my team-mates and friends having bad mental health.
“The bad winter combined with the lockdown was horrible. You couldn’t get out and do the things that you were doing in the first lockdown; going for walks and runs because the weather was so bad.”
Mental health was always going to be a huge focus for the club during lockdown, says Paul, but much like Sally, he admits he became ‘disillusioned’ during the summer when it became evident that, despite being back training, there would be no games.
He said: “We appointed Aiden as our well-being ambassador. He’s very skilled in that sort of field and his day job gives him that background and knowledge.
“We wanted the club to address the issues that would come up but didn’t really know how to go about doing it.
“We have to be a club that places a lot of importance on mental health. I might not have a full understanding of it all but we need to know that it’s a really important thing.
“Aiden’s going to really help the club along that path.
“I actually got really disillusioned when I realised that we were training and not going to have any games. That was very difficult for me.
“We don’t train because we like to sweat and run about. We train so we can compete and when it dawned on me that just wasn’t going to happen, that was a real challenge.
“And then obviously we ended up going back into lockdown and were back at square one again.”
There is light at the end of the tunnel with the club looking to get back into the swing of things soon.
Both Paul and Aiden, though, say they will put an emphasis on making sure everyone is OK mentally as they manage the return to team activities and training sessions.
Paul says: “When we do relaunch, I think we really have to pay some real cognisance to the fact that there will be some anxieties or mental hurdles that will be there.
“We can’t go straight in to 100mph after having such a long break. We need to do it carefully and we can’t just dust off the training plans from a year ago.
“We also have to be aware of the situation and be mindful of the community. We can’t have parts of West Lothian seeing increases in the infection rate just because we want to play some basketball.
“It’s been a really challenging year, especially the winter lockdown. We don’t really know how physically or mentally prepared they are going to be until they get on court.
“We, as a club, simply cannot go out there and train unless
it’s safe. Firstly, because we have to protect the community and secondly we need a plan in place – not just for the logistics of where and when are we going to train, but how are we going to cope with the fact we’ve been out for so long.
“We can’t put too much on the players or ourselves at the start. We’ve waited a year, let’s just be patient and make sure we’re doing things properly.”
Aiden added: “We try to connect with the people as an individual and not just the players and that’s something we’ll need to have extra focus on when we go back.
“We want to make them feel like this is a place where they don’t have to hide how they’re feeling.
“You can talk about your problems and it helps, whether it’s to coaches or some of your team-mates.
“Everyone has been fighting their own individual battles over the last 12 months and allowing them to share that is something we have to do.
“As coaches, we need to make sure we engage with all the players but also make sure that the environment we create at training is enjoyable and somewhere they want to be.
“Those are the main things we can do as a club.”
