Sean Leahy guards his man. / Courtesy photo
Sean Leahy is staying ready to hit the court in the midst of a pandemic.
Sean Leahy has no idea if he’ll get to take the court this year.
Leahy, who hails from Hanson, is a junior on the UMass Dartmouth men’s basketball team. The Corsairs’ season, which was scheduled to begin in November, has already been pushed to Jan. 16. But that’s not definite, as the Little East Conference is set to make a final decision on a winter campaign by Dec. 15, leaving Leahy and the rest of his team in limbo.
“You don’t know how much work you want to put in if it’s not going to happen, but I mean you still prepare just in case,” Leahy said.
Most of that preparation is done on his own time via an app with the team only conducting meetings virtually.
“Every three days, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we have like a 45-minute workout,” Leahy explained. “It’s all weights and we have running stuff that we have to do.”
As for on-the court drills, those are far and few between. Leahy estimates he’s picked up a basketball only about 10 times since school began in September.
“During the summer, I played two or three times a week with friends in town,” Leahy said. “Now, no gyms are really open and high schools won’t let you in.”
Leahy, a 6-foot-5 forward, is coming off a productive sophomore season, starting 26 games, scoring 8.1 points per game and corralling 6.6 rebounds per game. But with all this time off, he knows he’ll have to knock off some rust when he returns to the hardwood.
“You kind of lose that touch if you don’t play for that long, so I think jumping back into it is going to be tough without playing for six or seven months, like real pickup,” he said.
The Corsairs finished last season with a 16-11 record, falling to Western Connecticut State University in the Little East championship game. Leahy said this winter, they’re expecting to be the last team standing.
“We definitely want to win the conference championship, that’s a big one this year,” he said. “We kind of felt like it was our year. I think it was definitely our year, or is gonna be our year. We just gotta stay ready.