Interview with Matt Anderson - Italy/Olympics
Mar 19, 2020 8:44:41 GMT -5
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Post by future on Mar 19, 2020 8:44:41 GMT -5
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After his professional team in northern Italy stopped playing games because of the growing coronavirus pandemic, Team USA Olympic volleyball bronze medal-winner Matt Anderson, a Buffalo native, needed three planes and two layovers to return to his fiancée and newborn son in Indianapolis.
The West Seneca West and Penn State graduate didn’t have any symptoms of the respiratory disease COVID-19, which is spreading at an exponential rate and prompting lockdowns of countries across the globe.
But he was less than relieved to be back in the United States.
“The first thing I did, I had a little anxiety, so I called my sister,” Anderson said this week, explaining that she’s a nurse at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. “I was like, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on. Do I need to get tested?’
“And she’s like, ‘No, you’re fine.’
“I called the Indiana state board, I was like, ‘This is what’s happening. This is where I came from. Do I need to go get tested?’
“They’re like, ‘No, you’re fine.’
“I’m just trying to do my best, to do my duty to be as vigilant and as open as possible, but it’s so crazy because it takes one person just to come in contact and it spreads.”
Anderson, 32, and other Olympic athletes from Western New York who competed in the 2016 Rio Games – including gold medal-winning rower Emily Regan, a 31-year-old Nichols School graduate, and artistic (synchronized) swimmer Anita Alvarez, a 23-year-old Kenmore West alumna – spoke to The Buffalo News by phone this week about how the growing coronavirus crisis and quarantines have impacted their lives and training for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
The Tokyo Games are scheduled for July 24 to Aug. 9, but with major sporting events halted around the globe, and the pandemic worsening, there’s a growing sentiment that the Olympics will be canceled or postponed.
The epicenter of the pandemic has since shifted to Europe, with northern Italy bearing the brunt of the outbreak. Italy has reported more than 31,000 cases and 2,500 deaths. Hospitals have been overwhelmed. Nurses and doctors are triaging patients because of a lack of resources, including protective gear and respirators, a wartime philosophy of deciding who lives and dies based on best chances for survival. Morgues are inundated with bodies.
The country has been in total lockdown since Friday.
“My town (Bologna) was one of the first towns to have that sweeping ban instituted,” said Anderson, who made his Olympics debut at the 2012 London Games. “It was in Lombardia, like the main area, and we’re a couple of provinces away from there. Milan got hit really bad. … The culture of Italy is to go out and be in public and conversing, and so when a virus like that hit, it’s so easily transmitted that it’s no wonder to me that it ballooned into such a big thing.
“When it first started to come, I got my family out, my fiancée and our son. I got them home two weeks ago, right when everything started getting a little extreme over there.”
Anderson – who remained until the Italian Volleyball League suspended its season – last week flew from Italy to Amsterdam to Minneapolis to Indianapolis, while paying close attention to his personal hygiene.
“Not that I’m a dirty person by any means in general,” Anderson said. “I think it’s just staying smart and following the rules. I’m self-quarantining. I’m just chilling at home for two weeks until supposedly the symptoms or the virus could no longer be in me. If it is, I don’t qualify for any testing since I don’t have any symptoms. And so I just chill here until I can maybe go out for a little bit, but even then I don’t think I want to go out in public right now anyway.”
Anderson said he’s doing his best to remain in shape while home with his fiancée Jacquelyn and 6-week-old son Michael James, named after Anderson's late father, a silver lining amid the ordeal. Team USA men's volleyball qualified for the Olympics last summer, and while Anderson knows the Tokyo Games could be canceled or postponed, he said that isn’t “necessarily on the forefront of my mind.”
“It is a little bit because my fiancée and I are getting married a couple of weeks after the Olympics,” Anderson said. “So if it gets postponed a month, that definitely messes with some stuff, but we’ll cross that bridge if we get to it. Right now, it’s just about staying healthy, keeping my family healthy, making sure we have enough food to last this self-quarantine and then I’m prepared to either go out to California and start training with Team USA or go back to Italy to finish the season.”
Anderson said that since he doesn’t have symptoms, his fiancée goes to the supermarket once every four days or so to get food.
“But for the most part we Instacart stuff, we DoorDash food, and just let everybody know that I was in Italy and ask, ‘Can you leave it outside the door and we’ll get it?’ ” Anderson said. “We really limit our face-to-face contact with other people. We’re doing our best to not spread anything. You also don’t want to add to the hysteria of people, you know?”
Anderson said he often talks on the phone with Indiana University women’s volleyball coach Steve Aird, a longtime confidant and friend from Penn State.
“We always finish (our conversations) with, ‘Hey, man. Our lives are incredibly blessed. We have to be happy. We have to be positive about everything, because look what we have,’ ” Anderson said. “Being stuck in the house with my fiancée and my son – we have food, we have running water, we’re OK. I’m blessed. I’m happy.”
Story topics: 2020 Olympics/ coronavirus/ COVID-19
Jason WolfJason Wolf– Jason Wolf is a sports enterprise reporter for The Buffalo News. He is a 15-time recipient of the Associated Press Sports Editors national top-10 writing award. His work also has been honored by the Society for Features Journalism and cited in The Best American Sports Writing anthology.
After his professional team in northern Italy stopped playing games because of the growing coronavirus pandemic, Team USA Olympic volleyball bronze medal-winner Matt Anderson, a Buffalo native, needed three planes and two layovers to return to his fiancée and newborn son in Indianapolis.
The West Seneca West and Penn State graduate didn’t have any symptoms of the respiratory disease COVID-19, which is spreading at an exponential rate and prompting lockdowns of countries across the globe.
But he was less than relieved to be back in the United States.
“The first thing I did, I had a little anxiety, so I called my sister,” Anderson said this week, explaining that she’s a nurse at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. “I was like, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on. Do I need to get tested?’
“And she’s like, ‘No, you’re fine.’
“I called the Indiana state board, I was like, ‘This is what’s happening. This is where I came from. Do I need to go get tested?’
“They’re like, ‘No, you’re fine.’
“I’m just trying to do my best, to do my duty to be as vigilant and as open as possible, but it’s so crazy because it takes one person just to come in contact and it spreads.”
Anderson, 32, and other Olympic athletes from Western New York who competed in the 2016 Rio Games – including gold medal-winning rower Emily Regan, a 31-year-old Nichols School graduate, and artistic (synchronized) swimmer Anita Alvarez, a 23-year-old Kenmore West alumna – spoke to The Buffalo News by phone this week about how the growing coronavirus crisis and quarantines have impacted their lives and training for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
The Tokyo Games are scheduled for July 24 to Aug. 9, but with major sporting events halted around the globe, and the pandemic worsening, there’s a growing sentiment that the Olympics will be canceled or postponed.
The epicenter of the pandemic has since shifted to Europe, with northern Italy bearing the brunt of the outbreak. Italy has reported more than 31,000 cases and 2,500 deaths. Hospitals have been overwhelmed. Nurses and doctors are triaging patients because of a lack of resources, including protective gear and respirators, a wartime philosophy of deciding who lives and dies based on best chances for survival. Morgues are inundated with bodies.
The country has been in total lockdown since Friday.
“My town (Bologna) was one of the first towns to have that sweeping ban instituted,” said Anderson, who made his Olympics debut at the 2012 London Games. “It was in Lombardia, like the main area, and we’re a couple of provinces away from there. Milan got hit really bad. … The culture of Italy is to go out and be in public and conversing, and so when a virus like that hit, it’s so easily transmitted that it’s no wonder to me that it ballooned into such a big thing.
“When it first started to come, I got my family out, my fiancée and our son. I got them home two weeks ago, right when everything started getting a little extreme over there.”
Anderson – who remained until the Italian Volleyball League suspended its season – last week flew from Italy to Amsterdam to Minneapolis to Indianapolis, while paying close attention to his personal hygiene.
“Not that I’m a dirty person by any means in general,” Anderson said. “I think it’s just staying smart and following the rules. I’m self-quarantining. I’m just chilling at home for two weeks until supposedly the symptoms or the virus could no longer be in me. If it is, I don’t qualify for any testing since I don’t have any symptoms. And so I just chill here until I can maybe go out for a little bit, but even then I don’t think I want to go out in public right now anyway.”
Anderson said he’s doing his best to remain in shape while home with his fiancée Jacquelyn and 6-week-old son Michael James, named after Anderson's late father, a silver lining amid the ordeal. Team USA men's volleyball qualified for the Olympics last summer, and while Anderson knows the Tokyo Games could be canceled or postponed, he said that isn’t “necessarily on the forefront of my mind.”
“It is a little bit because my fiancée and I are getting married a couple of weeks after the Olympics,” Anderson said. “So if it gets postponed a month, that definitely messes with some stuff, but we’ll cross that bridge if we get to it. Right now, it’s just about staying healthy, keeping my family healthy, making sure we have enough food to last this self-quarantine and then I’m prepared to either go out to California and start training with Team USA or go back to Italy to finish the season.”
Anderson said that since he doesn’t have symptoms, his fiancée goes to the supermarket once every four days or so to get food.
“But for the most part we Instacart stuff, we DoorDash food, and just let everybody know that I was in Italy and ask, ‘Can you leave it outside the door and we’ll get it?’ ” Anderson said. “We really limit our face-to-face contact with other people. We’re doing our best to not spread anything. You also don’t want to add to the hysteria of people, you know?”
Anderson said he often talks on the phone with Indiana University women’s volleyball coach Steve Aird, a longtime confidant and friend from Penn State.
“We always finish (our conversations) with, ‘Hey, man. Our lives are incredibly blessed. We have to be happy. We have to be positive about everything, because look what we have,’ ” Anderson said. “Being stuck in the house with my fiancée and my son – we have food, we have running water, we’re OK. I’m blessed. I’m happy.”
Story topics: 2020 Olympics/ coronavirus/ COVID-19
Jason WolfJason Wolf– Jason Wolf is a sports enterprise reporter for The Buffalo News. He is a 15-time recipient of the Associated Press Sports Editors national top-10 writing award. His work also has been honored by the Society for Features Journalism and cited in The Best American Sports Writing anthology.
