Fresno State recruit sees COVID-19 impacts every day – his parents work at a New York hospital

Kyle Harding, the Fresno State Bulldogs’ latest basketball recruit, has his workouts to look forward to, which is no small thing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and no ordinary deal.

The 6-foot-3 guard for the past few years has worked with Tommy Tempesta, founder of Basketball Biomechanics, and basketball, the ball itself, is not always part of the deal. “It’s not just like, ‘OK, everybody get a ball, we’re going to put a chair down and you’re just going to do a move at a chair and lay the ball up,’” Harding said. “This is real stuff. He’s teaching us movement, how our bodies work and why certain players get hurt. He’s changed my game a lot … he’s serious.”

That time working out, that few hours a day, is a small piece of normal in an area where there is not a lot of it to be found due to the coronavirus.

Harding, who grew up on Long Island and is now back home in New York, is reminded of that every day. His parents both work at the Nassau University Medical Center – father Robert in emergency room admissions and mother Tanya in the mental health field.

Nassau County has the second-most confirmed cases of coronavirus in the state and the second-most COVID-19 deaths, behind only New York City.

There are 36,780 confirmed cases and 1,770 deaths in a county with a population of around 1.4 million – by comparison, there are 53,616 cases and 2,215 deaths in California, with a population of more than 39 million.

And when a patient comes in between midnight and 8 a.m., there’s a good chance one of the first people they will see is Robert Harding. Both parents, five nights a week, are on the front lines.

“With the virus going on, they see everything,” Kyle Harding said.

“They go there almost every night, and you never know what might happen. You might get exposed to something you’re not supposed to be exposed to. They have to stay safe, as well.”

Robert Harding said he and his wife don’t bring home the day’s events at the hospital, but do make sure their two sons are updated on the COVID-19 pandemic and the protocols that are in place.

“I give them some insight into the climate and what’s happening around,” Robert Harding said. “I let them know, ‘Listen, things are happening.’ I make sure they know this is a public health crisis that we’re in …”

Details are kept to the basics, but they’re all around them with social distancing, with people wearing masks or cloth face coverings. The daily tally of cases and deaths and the impact the pandemic is having on day-to-day life in New York and across the country are difficult to miss.

Workouts are a break

So when Tempesta backs up his sprinter van into their driveway on Long Island and unloads his equipment, Harding is ready to get to work, to hold onto something familiar.

Harding, who played the past two seasons at Hancock College in Santa Maria, flew home during spring break thinking he would return in a week, but was unable to fly back to California. Classes at Hancock are now held in a remote format, as they are at Fresno State. Harding also was recruited by Bulldogs coach Justin Hutson over the phone and has yet to even visit campus, which obviously is not the way he was thinking this recruiting process would go.

The only difference in those workouts is they’re in his backyard on Long Island, rather than a gym or a school.

“Ever since my sophomore year of high school I was going two times a week, three times a week,” Harding said. “We’d go to parks to workout, to the beach. As the years went on and he started to grow his company, I was going every day.”

Ready to help Bulldogs

That work Harding is able to put in now could prove invaluable to the Bulldogs when they do get back on the floor.

Hutson added four transfer guards during the spring signing period – Harding, Devin Gage, Isaiah Hill and Deon Stroud.

Harding and Gage, a graduate transfer from DePaul, are eligible this season. Hill and Stroud, Division I transfers from Tulsa and Texas-El Paso, will need a transfer waiver or for the NCAA to pass a one-time transfer exception to play next season for the Bulldogs.

The Division I Board of Directors last week recommended against that rule change, though the Division I Council still is expected to vote on and could approve it later this month.

Either way, while the Bulldogs try to find ways to get in workouts and shots up during coronavirus-related shelter in place restrictions and social distancing, Harding figures to be ahead of the curve.

Working with Tempesta, Harding was able to make it back from a season-ending leg injury in his freshman season at Hancock to average a team-high 13.6 points per game last season with 3.6 rebounds and 3.9 assists.

The Bulldogs went 23-7, advancing to the round of 16 in the California Community College Athletic Association tournament.

“He’ll hit the ground running because he has been working out everyday and Tommy has been getting in as much work as possible,” Robert Harding said. “He’s getting pro-level work in and everyone else is in quarantine.”