High 5 alum left with tough choice as UMass cancels football season

High 5 alum faces tough decision after his college team cancels season

Chinedu Ogbonna is a Wheeler High School graduate and star linebacker for UMass

Some High 5 Sports alumni are being left with difficult choices as schools and conferences postpone or cancel their football seasons because of COVID-19. Among those is linebacker Chinedu Ogbonna, a former Wheeler High School star, now a standout defensive player at the University of Massachusetts.

"Teams, conferences started cancelling," said Ogbonna, a senior at UMass. "The vibe around all the players was like, 'we're not playing. They might as well cancel it.'"

UMass competes in the Football Bowl Subdivision, but they are independent of any conference. Ogbonna said that as the players saw teams on their schedule start to cancel their own seasons, they started to worry their own season would be next. UMass' season opening game was set to be against UConn, another FBS independent school who canceled their season last week. They also had games scheduled against teams from the MAC and Mountain West conferences, both of which recently made cancellations official.

Ogbonna says the school's athletic director tried to reassure the team in a meeting last week that they would still play; but over the weekend, their head coach told the team things were not looking promising. Tuesday morning, they got the official news in a team meeting.

"Quiet," said Ogbonna of the meeting. "Everyone knew it was coming. Everybody gave each other that look, like, 'wow. It's really happening.'"

The school says they may try and play football in the spring, according to the Hartford Courant.

Ogbonna is now faced with a difficult choice. Coming off a season with a team-leading 9 tackles for loss for the Minutemen, the linebacker says he's not sure what his future holds.

The Wheeler alum says he is scheduled to graduate in December, leaving him with several options: postpone graduation and play next year at UMass, graduate and transfer to another school or graduate and focus on training for the NFL Draft.

"There's a lot I have to think about," said Ogbonna. "It's all just overwhelming right now."

Obgonna said he will pray and lean heavily on his mother for help with the decision, though he says she will support him in whatever path he takes. He'll also consult with his high school coaches for advice.

Ogbonna says he has already had pro football agents reach out to him to gauge his interest and let him know where he could be taken in the NFL Draft. He says, if he were to transfer, he would probably focus mostly on schools that recruited him out of Wheeler.

Ogbonna says conversations with teammates and friends who play college football elsewhere are pessimistic about the sport's chances in 2020.

"It's over," said Ogbonna. "That's pretty much the mood of everyone. Some people are being optimistic, like, 'we have a chance.' Now conferences are cancelling, there's probably no shot college football is going to happen. Our coach told us there's probably no shot. Teams in the SEC and ACC are going to try, but it's ultimately going to get canceled."