Columbia Basin sports fields and courts will be empty for the foreseeable future after Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced the mandatory closure of all K-12 schools statewide. The closure went into effect March 17 and will last until April 24, according to a tweet from Inslee.

Without classes in session, spring prep sports — baseball, softball, boys soccer, unified soccer, boys and girls golf, boys and girls tennis, and boys and girls track and field — are suspended.

“We kind of saw it coming,” said Washington Interscholastic Activities Association Executive Board President Greg Whitmore.

In the days leading up to the closure, uncertainty about spring sports swirled. Wahluke boys soccer games scheduled for Friday and Saturday against Seattle-area teams University Prep and Seattle Academy were canceled early this week due to coronavirus concerns. Othello baseball was also scheduled to travel to the west side to play Nathan Hale and Chief Sealth, but those games were also canceled early this week.

Moses Lake High School Ahtletic Director Loren Sandhop said he told his coaches, “practices are pretty much done until we get permission to meet again.”

“Today was a lot of tears, ‘my senior season’s gone,’ the full gambit of emotions,” Sandhop said. “It’s just too early to say. We haven’t called it off, we haven’t said, ‘OK, the season is gone’ like the Pac-12.”

Sandhop said it’s tough to know how everything will look in a week, two weeks, or five, adding that he can’t think of anything that equates to this in his lifetime.

“I don’t get five weeks in the summer,” Sandhop said. “It’s really weird to me to think that, right now in March, I’m gonna get five weeks where no kids are coming around. In the summer, we have kids lifting weights, at camps, events, everything. In the athletic world, we have athletes year round.”

The WIAA also announced Friday that a tournament worker at the 3A, 4A State Basketball Championships in Tacoma had tested positive for COVID-19.

“The WIAA has been in contact with the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department (TPCHD) and, because the individual became symptomatic after the tournament, the situation has been deemed by health officials to be low risk for those involved with the event,” the WIAA stated in a press release.

Because the individual first showed symptoms on March 9, health officials determined the earliest that individual could have been contagious was Saturday, March 7, the final day of the tournament.

Moses Lake girls basketball competed at the 4A Girls Hardwood Classic at the Tacoma Dome. Head coach Matt Strophy had not heard the WIAA’s announcement and said he would need to consult with Moses Lake athletic director Loren Sandhop.

Sandhop had just heard the news about the state tournament around the same time as his girls basketball coach. Sandhop said they would have a better idea of their course of action after they learn more about the positive case in Tacoma.

A lot of things are going to be answered soon, Sandhop noted.