As women’s basketball gears up for season, players reflect on unique quarantines

This post was updated Nov. 1 at 8:33 p.m.

When Chantel Horvat went home after last season ended abruptly, she was stuck in her little brother’s room and couldn’t see a single person for two weeks.

Quarantining in the only room that had direct access to outside and a bathroom in her Australian home, the redshirt junior guard couldn’t leave, with the exception of little walks outside.

She would wait behind the door for her mom to drop off meals and could hear all of her family’s conversations in which she couldn’t partake.

But given the timing, she considers herself lucky that’s all she had to do.

“Now, when you go back into the country, you’re put into a hotel room, so I just missed the cutoff for hotel quarantining – I think maybe about five days after I arrived back in the country that was implemented,” Horvat said. “Now I have friends who will quarantine in a hotel for two weeks and not even be in the same city as their family.”

Horvat’s story is just one of many different quarantine tales from the UCLA women’s basketball team, a team that has no two players from the same city and features five players from abroad.

Compared to some of her teammates who live stateside, Horvat’s quarantine experience was unique. The hotel quarantine policy is only one of many differences between global and domestic COVID-19 responses.

“It is really interesting – just different countries have different ways of doing things,” Horvat said. “Quarantine looks a lot different in the U.S. compared to Australia.”

For the Indiana resident Lindsey Corsaro, her state’s lenient COVID-19 protocols allowed for the redshirt junior guard to work on her game while away from the team in the offseason.

“Indiana was really open,” Corsaro said. “So really my whole quarantine with the exception of the first couple of weeks in March and April was with my trainer in the gym any day I wanted.”

Corsaro described her family as “workout crazy,” as they have a full gym in her house which includes a weight room, a treadmill and an elliptical.

Coming off two season-ending injuries in her three years at UCLA, Corsaro said getting the ability to work out and fully rebuild her body in the offseason was crucial in her decision to play this year.

“I’ve been able to train a ton and I’m excited to come back,” Corsaro said. “Just my experiences of multiple injuries, it made that desire to get to come back and have another year that much stronger. After having such a fun – if you can call it that – quarantine as far as training goes, it was kind of a no-brainer.”

Corsaro is entering her fifth year at UCLA and knew what to expect when she eventually returned to Westwood, but freshman forward Emily Bessoir had no such luxury.

While quarantining in her hometown of Munich, Bessoir said she had no idea what to expect when she arrived in the U.S. but was worried about the rising COVID-19 numbers.

Bessoir said the original plan was for her to come over in June, but then that became July, then August, until it became unclear if she would ever come over at all.

“It just kept developing into a better situation in Germany than it was in the United States,” Bessoir said. “My parents and I, we had a lot of conversations about that. I even talked to coach (Cori Close) about it, because we were just a little bit afraid – my parents were afraid of sending their girl over to a country where it’s not safe.”

Despite being nearly 6,000 miles away from Westwood, Bessoir said she always felt like she was a part of the UCLA women’s basketball program even though she hadn’t suited up for a single game.

Bessoir had weekly conversations with her coaches and teammates during virtual meetings and ultimately decided she would be safe with all the COVID-19 protocols in place at UCLA.

“I always felt like I was already there, like with the team, even though I still was in Germany, because I knew everybody (was) in the same situation,” Bessoir said. “Just because I’m in Germany, I was still part of the team.”

When Bessoir, Corsaro and Horvat eventually made their ways back to campus, they yet again were subject to a quarantine period, isolating for a week-plus before they could interact with their teammates.

Compared to the six months they had to quarantine away from their fellow Bruins in the offseason, this one week was nothing.

“I had lots of things to do during that week and it went super fast,” Horvat said. “I’m just really grateful for that.”