The college basketball player:
‘I’ve definitely missed being at school’
Nick Finke thought he had experienced intense environments before.
Like a packed Combes Gym on a winter Friday night, playing in the annual Champaign Central-Centennial boys’ basketball game Finke grew so accustomed to during his prep career.
But the 2016 Champaign Central graduate, who started his high school career at Centennial before transferring to Central, says the Champaign showdown has nothing on another bitter rivalry. Army-Navy.
“Both are extremely intense, but I think I would have to choose the Army-Navy game,” Finke said. “The environment of Combes Gym is really intense but playing in front of thousands, including generals, is the most intense environment I’ve played in.”
Finke is about to start his senior year at Army, where the 6-foot-7, 223-pound forward has seen limited playing time during his college career with the Black Knights. But injuries have played a part, too, such as a sprained ankle he sustained last summer.
And picking up an injury in a setting hardly any other college basketball player will likely endure before a junior season saw him play in 21 games off the bench, where he averaged 5.8 minutes, 0.7 points and 1.2 rebounds.
“We have to take a combatives class at West Point, which teaches us close combat fighting, and in my final fight I dislocated my shoulder,” Finke said. “I am healthy now, though, and am going into this season healthy.”
Finke has spent the past three months in Champaign because of the coronavirus pandemic, missing out on finishing last semester with his Army classmates back on the academy’s campus in West Point, N.Y. He is set to return to West Point on July 25, spending two weeks in quarantine and conducting leadership development training with other seniors.
“I’ve definitely missed being at school,” Finke said. “We have such a strict daily routine at West Point that being out of it for so long was hard to get used to.”
Adjusting to uncomfortable situations, though, is part of what has made Finke’s experience at Army so enlightening. Take for instance last summer when Finke was put in charge of 32 incoming freshmen for their basic training upon entering West Point.
“This was one of the biggest places I had personal growth at West Point and was able to learn my own leadership style,” Finke said. “This also translates into basketball as well, especially as a rising senior on the team. I have been able to use what West Point has taught me to be a leader to my teammates, and especially incoming freshmen who will generally struggle with the adjustment of life at West Point.”
The summer plans Finke had envisioned are obviously altered. Currently, he was supposed to take part in his first training event of the summer, called Cadet Leader Development Training. The training consists of Finke spending 12 days in the field conducting missions with his classmates.
“It is essentially a small-scale Ranger school,” he said.
At the end of the summer, he was supposed to head to Fort Lewis in Seattle to shadow a second lieutenant for a month before returning to West Point. All of that is postponed for the time being.
What isn’t canceled is Finke’s future plans once he graduates from West Point next spring. He is required to serve five years in the Army upon his graduation, and the 22-year-old Finke is planning to join either air defense artillery or field artillery, with him serving either at Fort Lewis or at Fort Hood near Austin, Texas.
Sacrifices are part of what Finke and his classmates at West Point deal with every day. So getting to spend the past three months back in his hometown, alongside his older brother, Michael, younger brother, Tim, and younger sister, Ashley isn’t all that bad. Especially from a basketball standpoint, too, since Michael, who played at Illinois and Grand Canyon, just wrapped up his first season playing professionally overseas and Tim is about to start his sophomore season playing at Wright State.
“My family started a step competition to keep us accountable on being active and moving during this time,” Nick said. “This is the first time Tim and I have really been able to take control of our strength training upon ourselves for an extended period of time, rather than being in a team environment with a strength coach. Working through that together has been something both of us have enjoyed doing. Michael, Tim and I have been able to play basketball together, and having a basketball hoop in our driveway has helped with that a lot. I also have been working out with my sister. It has been cool to have our whole family home considering we all live in separate parts of the country and even world now.”
The tennis broadcaster: ‘I’ve already lost 50 percent of my yearly salary so far’
Tennis has given Mike Cation the chance to see parts of the country — and world — he never could have imagined.
“I’m incredibly lucky to spend time in new cities each year,” Cation said.
The 43-year-old Urbana native, who is currently living in Tulsa, Okla., has not traveled much, though, during the last three months.
The coronavirus pandemic bringing live sporting events to a halt has denied Cation a chance to perform his job during that same time span: pro tennis broadcaster.
The voice belonging to the 1994 Urbana High School graduate and 1998 University of Illinois graduate is familiar to Illini fans. He served eight years as the public address announcer for Illinois men’s basketball home games before stepping aside in 2015 to concentrate on his tennis announcing duties, which he’s had since July 2013.
But Cation has missed out on six weeks of planned tournament coverage, plus three more events he was planning to call have already been canceled.
“There’s a decent likelihood that I’m only able to work maybe 1-2 more events this year,” Cation said. “Essentially, I’ve already lost 50 percent of my yearly salary so far.”
Given the fact the ATP and WTA tours have canceled tournaments through July, Cation isn’t sure when he’ll get to call another tennis match in 2020. And if he does, where he’ll physically be at is unclear if broadcasters are not allowed on site.
“I’ve recently hit a point where I’ve reached out to potential employers, and expressed my interest in broadcasting both on site for bigger events, and from home for the smaller events,” Cation said. “I think pre-vaccine, you will see broadcasting on location for most of your larger sporting events, such as the US Open and French Open. Already in tennis, many of the ATP and WTA events are broadcast from a remote location in England for their in-house broadcasts. Tennis Channel does most of their broadcasting from their studios in Los Angeles. That makes things quite difficult for someone in my situation, living in Tulsa.”
Aside from those concerns is another one Cation brings up. Let’s say tennis is able to resume its tournaments at some point in 2020. But so do other sports leagues. What TV networks, outside of the Tennis Channel, will want to broadcast tennis?
“I can’t imagine that ESPN is going to broadcast a ton of tennis on their main platform when the US Open will be up against the end of the baseball and basketball seasons,” Cation said. “So tennis is likely a sport that will be marginalized to online platforms. What that does for mean for the number of broadcast opportunities?”
All good questions. With no easy answers at the moment.
It’s quite a stark contrast from what Cation is used to working in the spring. Although with his job, there is really no set routine.
“A normal month would consist for me of one or two tournaments, occasionally three,” Cation said. “For each event, I travel out early on a Sunday morning, get in and settled at an Airbnb, and start preparing. At a Challenger event, Monday through Friday consists of me doing solo commentary for both an online stream, and often a Tennis Channel audience, from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. After 10, I immediately grab some dinner, and start doing my prep work, get about six hours of sleep, wake up, get as much coffee as possible and do it all over again.”
The weekends offer some more down time, with semifinal matches on Saturday and championship matches on Sunday not occupying his entire day and night.
“I try to make sure to see at least one thing in the city, be it a cultural event or a historical marker, and make sure to have one very nice dinner,” Cation said. “I’ll also make sure I get in a couple workouts, and do some laundry.”
Then, it’s back to the grind. Of course, that hasn’t transpired this spring and Cation has built up somewhat of a routine to fill his weeks.
He and his ex-wife share joint custody of their 5-year-old daughter, Marnie, and Cation has made the most of the unexpected down time this spring to spend with his daughter.
“My ex-wife has been able to continue to work during the pandemic, which is quite fortunate,” Cation said. “As a result, we split the week evenly with our daughter, with me taking her Monday through Thursday afternoon, and then she’ll be at her mom’s from Thursday to Monday morning. Pretty standard for so many people right now, I’d imagine, but a normal month has been really, really different now.”
When he’s not spending time with his daughter, he’s trying to make ends meet financially before he can possibly get the chance to resume broadcasting tennis matches at some point in the future.
“I did receive a Paycheck Protection Program loan as an independent contractor trying to survive, but I’m trying to play a slew of poker on the weekends to try and make some extra money,” Cation said. “Poker is starting to help pay the bills just a little bit.”
All things considered, Cation is getting by. But he’s eager to resume his career and his passion of broadcasting tennis whenever it is possible to do so.
“I’ve gotten to watch a lot of young, talented tennis players grow both personally and professionally,” Cation said. “Watching their development from my unique perspective has been such an honor.”
The Illini fan: ‘I will be there if I feel it’s safe’
For the first time in decades, Todd Lindsey wasn’t going to organize the annual Illini Quarterback Club golf outing in 2020.
And this was before the coronavirus pandemic postponed the event, usually held in early June at the UI Golf Course in Savoy.
“I had been re-elected to the QB board many times since I first got on in 1995, but as my term expired earlier this year, I decided to cut back on some things and not run again for election,” said Lindsey, who works as a treasury management commercial sales officer with Heartland Bank in Champaign. “I definitely would have tried to play. It’s kind of my baby.”
And the booster club’s biggest fundraiser each year since it was first held in 1995.
“We’d been very fortunate with turnout, weather and some very generous participants and donors to be able to raise a good amount of money for the program over the last 25 years,” Lindsey said. “The different football staffs over the years have put the funds towards many needs, including computers, weight-room equipment, new recruiting lounge furniture and many other items.”
The event has seen Illini coaches on the golf course, with Ron Turner, Ron Zook, Tim Beckman, Bill Cubit and Lovie Smith venturing out to meet with members and even get a few swings in.
Some of Lindsey’s fondest memories are playing with former Illini assistant coaches Mike Cassity and Luke Butkus. But one indelible memory stands out from when Turner attended the 1998 event.
“One of the perks I afforded myself, since I often had to piece teams together to make things work, was to include a coach in my playing group,” Lindsey said. “The best moment might be spending five hours with Ron Turner. Not really any great stories, but he was just figuring out this college head coaching gig and wanted nothing to do with golf. At all. He was very nice and accommodating, but he was as miserable playing golf as anyone I’ve ever seen.”
Aside from his time organizing the golf outing, Lindsey is a passionate Illini fan and has been since his youth. The 1987 graduate of Eastern Illinois University — who grew up in Mason City — moved to Urbana shortly after his college graduation to start working and has stayed in the area since. He worked as an usher at Memorial Stadium for about 10 years and then became a football season-ticket holder once he stopped working football games. He has held season tickets for Illinois basketball games since 1990.
But he hasn’t purchased season tickets yet for the upcoming 2020-21 school year in both sports because of the pandemic.
“I absolutely will if we are allowed to attend and if it’s safe to do so,” Lindsey said.
That’s the big question right now surrounding college sports — and pro sports — is if fans might be allowed to attend games later this year. It’s a question Lindsey wrestles with almost daily.
“I’m inherently a careful person, and that certainly applies to this virus with me and my family,” said Lindsey, who is married to Martha Cooper and has two children, 26-year-old Anson and 25-year-old Maddie. “Not having sports is very difficult for me, and not attending or being able to even watch games just doesn’t compute sometimes. I guess the best way I can answer that is I will definitely be there if I feel it’s safe. I’m just not sure yet what ‘safe’ is going to look like this fall.”
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June 14, 2020 at 07:00PM
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Sunday Special | Impact of coronavirus on local sports community, part XII - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette
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