A worldwide halt on competitive sports spread quickly across the globe, and it didn’t take long to cast a pall over the sports scene in Eastern Washington.

It began on March 1, 2020, in Italy, when a soccer match was played without fans – something that would become a regular occurrence – an ocean and nine times zones away from Spokane. High school basketball teams were preparing then to crisscross the state of Washington for state tournaments in Tacoma, Yakima and Spokane.

The following weekend, fans were banned from attending Division III basketball games at Johns Hopkins University, just as the Whitworth men’s basketball team was busy upsetting two other D-III teams at a different site, in Dallas, playing what turned out to be its final games of the season.

On March 11, the impact cut even closer when the World Health Organization officially declared a pandemic, professional leagues scrambled to move or postpone games, and the NCAA announced it would play tournament games – including those scheduled for Spokane – without fans.

The next day, the sports world canceled or postponed basically everything on its foreseeable schedule, all across the world.

It meant no NCAA Tournament for the top-ranked Gonzaga men as well as the Gonzaga women, who were most likely going to be placed in Spokane for their opening-round pod.

It meant the end of the season for other local college basketball teams, too, with aspirations for postseason play.

It meant the end of high school sports careers for so many 2020 seniors.

The pandemic would go on to bottle up hockey, baseball, soccer, golf, swimming and countless other casual and competitive sporting events in the region during the 12 months that followed.

Athletes have crept back, first to practice and then to competition. But as fans are gradually allowed back into the venues they were prohibited the past year from entering, there is plenty in the local sports scene to look back on: games that were expected to be played but weren’t, and seasons scheduled but never finished.

An abrupt end to the college basketball season

On March 10, 2020, the Gonzaga men defeated Saint Mary’s in the West Coast Conference tournament finals at Orleans Arena in Paradise, Nevada. The victory improved their record to 31-2, and the prevailing sentiment among bracket predictors was that the Zags would begin the NCAA Tournament in Spokane as a No. 1 seed.

Their two losses had come elsewhere – in Provo, Utah, to BYU a few weeks earlier, and a neutral site defeat to Michigan in November in the Bahamas – and Gonzaga looked poised for another tournament run. But the bracket was never released.

“Missing out on this opportunity to have the hometown team playing here and having our fans be part of that, it was bad enough the other day when it was no fans, but we were still going to be able to play,” Gonzaga athletics director Mike Roth said at the time. “And now not even getting to play, it’s a double whammy for sure.”

Meanwhile, the Gonzaga women’s basketball team was optimistic that it would earn a top-four seed and the opportunity to host a pod for the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament. Ranked 11th in the AP polls, Gonzaga was 28-3 overall and 14-0 at home.

Yet Gonzaga wasn’t alone among local teams whose promising seasons ended early.

In Boise, the Eastern Washington men’s basketball team was the No. 1 seed in the Big Sky Conference tournament and preparing to play Sacramento State on March 12. But that game never happened; the tournament was postponed after only playing the first-round games the day before.

At the time, the Eagles were 23-8 and riding a seven-game winning streak. They had Mason Peatling, who earlier that week was named the conference’s player of the year.

“The team is depressed, man,” Eagles coach Shantay Legans said at the time. “Competing in the NCAA Tournament is a goal of everyone’s. The finality of it all is tough. Who knows, we could have been a Cinderella team. We could have done a lot of different things.”

At the time, the Idaho women’s basketball team (22-9) was also still alive in the Big Sky tournament in Boise, having advanced to the championship game scheduled for that Friday against Montana State. The Vandals were seeking their first Big Sky championship since 2016.

Back in Las Vegas, the Washington State men’s basketball team played what turned out to be the last game of the 2019-20 college basketball season: an 82-68 victory for the Cougars over Colorado. A game the next day in the Big East Tournament made it to halftime but was then suspended.

The victory for WSU was its first in the Pac-12 Tournament since 2009 and boosted its record to 16-16, five more wins than the previous season.

In Spokane that week, the Whitworth men were preparing to drive to the airport so they could fly east for the Sweet 16 round of the Division III Tournament when they got the news, too: The NCAA had ended its postseason early, and the Pirates’ season was over with a 23-6 record.

An early summer, and financial losses, follow

Spring sports seasons across the area’s colleges and high schools were halted and then canceled that month as schools went virtual and restrictions on gatherings set in.

So, too, did the hockey season for teams like the Spokane Chiefs, whose campaign was suspended and then canceled with four games left before the playoffs.

At the time, the Chiefs were third in their division of the Western Hockey League, but they were hot: winners of 16 of their last 17 games, the Chiefs boasted a roster that had the eventual league MVP in Adam Beckman and the league’s best defenseman in Ty Smith.

Suddenly, though, players could hardly find anywhere to skate.

“It’s definitely weird,” forward Bear Hughes, who lives in Post Falls, said then. “So much free time.”

The Spokane Indians baseball team never got to play a single game. Major League Baseball managed only to get a 60-game season in for itself. All of MLB’s affiliated minor leagues, most of which couldn’t afford to play without fans in the stands, canceled theirs entirely.

Ownership of the Indians and Chiefs – both part of Brett Sports – received help through the Paycheck Protection Program that allowed the teams to retain staff, but they also were forced to furlough employees.

The financial impact of the pandemic on local sports, like nearly everywhere else, was significant.

The cancellation of the postseason tournament meant millions of dollars in lost revenue for the NCAA, and so it distributed $225 million to its Division I member schools last June, $375 million less than expected. That rippled across the sport’s institutions, including at Gonzaga.

WSU also felt the financial crunch. In January, director of athletics Pat Chun estimated the pandemic cost the department approximately $30 million. Other athletics departments in the area endured their own cuts as well, with many coaches and administrators taking pay cuts.

In late summer, there was hope of college football seasons being played somewhat as scheduled, even if fans wouldn’t be allowed to attend. The Pac-12 released a 10-game, conference-only schedule on July 31 – only to scrap it two weeks later.

However, it revived plans for a shortened season in late-September, and ultimately first-year coach Nick Rolovich and Washington State opened their football season Nov. 7, with a 38-28 victory at Oregon State.

As the weather turned colder, the number of COVID-19 cases grew. And eventually either the Cougars or their opponents had enough positive tests and associated quarantines to cancel three games, including the Apple Cup against Washington, which wasn’t played for the first time since 1944 .

Eastern Washington and Idaho pushed their football seasons to the spring of 2021, as did D-III Whitworth. Those seasons will be shorter than usual. They have become tune-ups for what promises to be a more normal fall of 2021, when some seniors will try to eke out one more year of eligibility, granted by the NCAA in light of the pandemic.

But not all athletes will be able to reschedule their college careers – or postpone their post-college careers – and so for many the pandemic will mark the end of their playing days.

High school athletes – at least those in Washington – saw their seasons shortened and crammed into the beginning of 2021. Conference or league titles will in most cases be the best they can hope to achieve, with state tournaments in doubt.

A slow crawl back to normalcy

The list of Spokane-area events canceled in the last year could go on. There were big ones like Bloomsday and Hoopfest. There were small ones, too, like youth sports. So many fields remained empty, and even as sports crept back events were played in mostly fanless forums.

Gradually that is changing, though, and as Spokane’s routines return to something more like a year ago, sports are as well.

Youth sports leagues are registering kids for this spring and summer. Fans will be allowed back in still limited – but growing – numbers. Seniors in high school will get a partial season before they graduate.

The Chiefs hockey team is gearing up for a shortened WHL season. Indians baseball is scheduled to play earlier and more often than before, now as a full-season affiliate of the Colorado Rockies.

And, just as they were last year, the Gonzaga men’s and women’s basketball teams are in similar positions: poised for the postseason, aiming for a finish that was wiped away one year ago.