♪♪ On this visit to The Film Lounge -- A couple gets high-tech help for their marriage woes.

An urban artist reflects on his youth.

A locked-down filmmaker becomes the ultimate auteur.

A group of elite athletes grieve the loss of their season.

And Film Lounge filmmakers help us celebrate our five year anniversary.

Strap yourself in for another ride at The Film Lounge.

♪♪ Funding for The Film Lounge has been provided by -- ♪♪ Produce Iowa -- building a statewide network of support for the film community in Iowa.

More information on how you can connect is available at produceiowa.com.

And -- Iowa Arts Council -- empowering Iowa to build and sustain culturally vibrant communities by cultivating creativity, learning and participation in the arts.

Learn more at iowaculture.gov.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ My name is Jacob Withers.

I'm from Des Moines.

I do screenwriting, sound recording and sound editing.

Jacob Winters: So, Welcome to a Better You is a comedy short that I worked on with Justin Norman.

I co-wrote it and also did the sound recording and the heavier parts of the sound editing.

Jacob Winters: So, when I walked into the room the idea was already sitting there.

All we had was the basic idea of there is a guy and his wife and they are unhappy and they get a clone.

And we had a rough beginning and end to it.

We knew the last shot and the first shot and very quickly put together an outline for it.

We just lay things out in terms of a basic three act structure with three sub-acts to each thing and three parts to each one.

And that way we've got a clean outline of just here are the actions that occur at each point, here's how things develop, here is how we transition from one to the next.

♪♪ Jacob Withers: We were trying to keep it to about 7 minutes of run time and we failed at that.

We probably would have been looking at like 20 minutes if we hadn't cut it down quite a bit.

We ended up at that point at the end where you've got a lot of good ideas that you like and they're sitting off to the side and every so often you can be like, no I'm still going to put that into something at some point, I can't use it for that one, it had to be cut, it wasn't going to work but it's still there.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Um, I would like to order the turkey leg homestyle, cool ranch Doritos, the baby corn stick -- And the drinks are on me.

Yeah, I admire the sound of your voice.

I'll be there in 15.

Name's Thad.

You got this.

(swallows drink) OH!

YEAH!

BABY!

It's gonna work this time.

Yep.

You got it.

What the hell, Thad?

It's four in the morning.

I have to be at work in three hours.

The whole house is a mess.

Two for one turkey leg?

Again?

I swear to God if you miss work one more time -- You're what?

Hmm?

What?

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Yes, my reference number is 9105H.

♪♪ Um, yeah, I'd just like to complete it.

♪♪ Um, just sometime this week if possible.

♪♪ Yeah.

I think it's what's best for both of us.

♪♪ No, no, without genitals is fine.

♪♪ (knocking on door) ♪♪ (knocking on door) Hi!

(birds chirping) Hmm.

You're one of those things, huh?

Yep!

Cheek swab.

You don't even look like me.

Well, I guess we're doing this thing.

Come in.

Nadine!

♪♪ Nadine!

The thing you ordered is here.

I'm not paying for this!

♪♪ Sure, go ahead, make yourself at home.

♪♪ Do you feel pain?

Oh, it's here!

Hi, I'm Nadine.

Tad.

Nice to meet you, Tad.

Yeah, Tad's just going to be helping us out with some stuff around the house so that we can be less stressed and you can, you know, do your hobbies.

Looks like you have a bit of a mess here.

I'll take care of that.

Oh, that's amazing.

Well, I'm off to work.

You boys have a good day!

6 PM, you'll be wanting dinner then.

I'll take care of that!

Oh Tad, my tummy's rumbling already!

♪♪ (Tad humming) Hey, um, did you get that from the store?

Yep, got it from the Loaf 'n' Jug on Main.

I'm gonna ask you to run a couple, like, an errand for me.

There's a, uh, liquor store on the corner of 5th and Bemidji.

The corner.

And they have a peanut butter vodka, flavored, peanut butter flavored vodka that I want you to get me.

I'm not allowed to purchase alcoholic beverages of any type.

Fine.

(Tad humming) I'll get it myself.

(Tad humming) ♪♪ ♪ (heavy metal music) ♪ ♪ (classical music) ♪ Mmm, God, this is delicious, Tad.

So, how was everyone's day today?

I had a perfect day, Nadine.

I took out all the garbage, recycled all of the alcohol containers, washed myself, did all my laundry, dusted the inside of the house and the outside of the house, and I made this whole meal with organic ingredients for only $12.

Hmm.

And Thad?

I told him to do all that.

♪♪ Well, great.

Productive day for everyone then.

Mm-hmm.

Maybe tomorrow Tad can clean out the Airstream.

The what?

My Airstream?

Well, we can't sell it in that kind of shape.

(Thad screams) That is my pad.

You're going to sell my pad?

My place?

Not selling it.

You barely even use it anymore.

It's just full of rotting turkey leg bones.

We're buried in crippling debt, Thad.

♪♪ We need to either sell or return everything that we own.

♪♪ I know something we can return.

♪♪ You can't return a salad, Thad.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Oh hi!

Hello!

Wow, Tad!

This looks amazing!

The smell of bird rot is less pungent than it has been in years.

I just can't believe how much you've improved things around here.

Thanks.

You just -- you really are a better you.

♪♪ Where are you going?

Getting a drink.

Well, don't worry about coming home early.

Tad can go to work for you tomorrow.

See ya buddy!

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ (Thad sobbing) ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ (Tad humming) Yes, I would like to order that extension package.

Um, can you express ship?

That would be amazing.

It's a little late to be making a salad, don't you think?

Nadine was hungry.

Power down, Tad.

Tad, turn off.

Where's your power button?

♪♪ Get out of my house!

♪♪ ♪♪ Whose house?

♪♪ ♪♪ (Thad laughing) You spent all that time tossing salads.

But I bet you never thought that someday, someone would be tossing you -- -- IN THE TRASH!

♪♪ Looks like you committed homicide.

I'll take care of that.

♪♪ Go ahead, call the cops.

I'll take the fall.

♪♪ I will.

Just, a second.

♪♪ Everything all right?

Yeah.

Everything's gonna be fine.

♪♪ ♪ (heavy metal music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪ (somber music) ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ My name is Lucius Pham.

I'm from Des Moines, Iowa.

And my music video is The Call by Teller Bank$.

Lucius Pham: Teller is an example of someone I met through being a fan first and then starting a relationship with.

I love his music and he really wanted to tell the story about starting out, you know, he admittedly wasn't a stand-up guy and got into some nefarious stuff.

And so we kind of channeled that into, all right, maybe you're stealing a television set, because I liked the way that looked.

♪♪ Lucius Pham: So, I think we were largely inspired by the beat of the song.

It's kind of retro.

And we talked about it being kind of reminiscent of Blaxploitation films from the '70s, so like Shaft and Super Fly and Foxy Brown.

And so we kind of wanted to chase that a little bit while also telling the story of where Teller is from and what he had to do in order to get where he is.

♪♪ Lucius Pham: We talked about different ways of doing the music video.

It was basically the whole production was me with a handheld.

And we picked kind of a gross day to shoot because we wanted the whole feel to be sort of dirty.

I think there is an emphasis right now on making music videos to look kind of polished and clean and I just didn't think that was going to work with this music video.

So we wanted to kind of get our hands dirty and we shot, it was a long day, it really just took a day of shooting, but it was a good shoot.

♪♪ Lucius Pham: I think primarily I am a writer.

I think that works well with music videos and short films as a medium, specifically music videos because it kind of allows you a lot of space for creativity in a short amount of time.

Music videos are very similar to just feature films, just way shorter, and every second counts rather than every minute.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Back when I was spending 12 hours a day at the pawn shop ♪ ♪ Before I met the Mexicans had me up like alarm clocks ♪ ♪ Starin' down that long barrel always been a long shot ♪ ♪ Type of n---- measure my work by what my moms got ♪ ♪ You can lose it all at the right time in the wrong spot ♪ ♪ I can't even count how many times I almost got shot ♪ ♪ Been a lanky n---- since a youngin', ♪ ♪ wanna see how long my arms got?

♪ ♪ Graduated with honors out the hard knocks ♪ ♪ Never catch me out in the corner movin' the hard rock ♪ ♪ I'm the reason n----- up double checkin' if doors locked ♪ ♪ Not a strange to stove top -- ♪ ♪ dope spot -- top chef ♪ ♪ For a fee whip a quarter to whole blocks ♪ ♪ Came through in the drought with a cape on, ♪ ♪ saved the whole block ♪ ♪ Hit a lick on the wholesaler, sellin' the whole stock ♪ ♪ Stockpile -- hostile ♪ ♪ You either gettin' got or gettin' yours ♪ ♪ that's just the lifestyle ♪ ♪ They got teens fightin' the state ♪ ♪ facin' a life trial ♪ ♪ Life wild, they told me I was a bright child ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ (glass breaking) ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Hannah Rosalie Wright: At kind of near the beginning of the pandemic, like the early months of it, the 48 Hour Film Project, which is something I was involved with last year and they put out these challenges that I thought would be a good opportunity to challenge myself to reconnect in COVID friendly ways with friends of mine.

Cupcake, it was all shot in a day.

It's a horror film about a baker who gets an order and after she gets that order, weird things start happening.

♪♪ Hannah Rosalie Wright: So, we were participating in the 48 Hour Stuck-at-Home Challenge, which is a challenge where within 48 hours you write, shoot and edit and complete a finished short film.

My role was to direct it, so I was thinking about how the actor was doing.

I was also the actor.

So I had to think about my performance and if I was conveying what I would, this character.

And I was also shooting it.

So I had to think about the lighting and make adjustments in that.

Hannah Rosalie Wright: I never saw the editor in person, I never saw the art director, musician, I never saw the writers.

It definitely felt like a collaborative experience even though we were all in our own homes.

The collaboration had to be really intentional and really listening to people's ideas and implementing it.

Hannah Rosalie Wright: I would set it up and then I would record just a little bit, you know, kind of see where I was placed.

I would mark where I was standing, then I would go review it, check to see if everything looked okay.

There were a lot of shots that didn't come through very well.

Hannah Rosalie Wright: After the day of shooting and the day of doing all this work by myself, I felt like I wanted to make another film.

And maybe that is just something that all filmmakers share and that's why they keep doing it because it's a lot of work but it feels so rewarding.

(glass clinking) ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ (typing on laptop) ♪♪ (door opens and closes) (door opens) ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ (typing on laptop) (typing on laptop) ♪♪ (heavy breathing) ♪♪ (heavy breathing) (heavy breathing) ♪♪ (door opens) ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Oh honey, they look delicious.

My Norma Jean would have loved them.

(gasps) (heavy breathing) (heavy breathing) (door opens) (door opens) Is that you, dear?

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I'm John Richard and my film, The Simple Gift of Walnut Grove, was featured on the first installment of The Film Lounge.

It was almost uncanny how he could take a piece of metal and shape it into something useful.

John Richard: Since then I have been working on a variety of projects, most notably a commission for the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra, American Gothic for orchestra, which was a cinematic visual that went along with a live symphony performance and a feature film called Saving Brinton, which was about some of the earliest films in the world that were discovered in a farmhouse in rural Iowa.

John Richard: Currently, most of my energy is spent working on a project about a mountain climbing club that, surprisingly enough, was formed in the 1940's in Iowa City and grew to be one of the largest and most influential clubs in the country.

John Richard: It's really exciting to see that The Film Lounge continues into the future and for so many different voices to have such a distinguished platform in which to present their work.

I'm really excited about the future of film production in Iowa and creating an industry and building a sort of culture that is of this place and by this place.

And I look forward to working with everyone and celebrating our achievements in the future.

My name is Kristian Day and my film Cactua placed during the very first season of The Film Lounge.

♪♪ Kristian Day: I have still continued to make films with my friends.

I did a piece that was produced for Crypt TV called Bath Bomb.

We shot that in LA.

Actually it was with an almost all-Iowa crew, but we shot it in LA.

♪♪ ♪♪ Kristian Day: I made another film with some buddies called Mushtown.

We shot that in Stratford, Iowa with a bunch of my friends from The Bachelor.

They flew out to Des Moines, we drove up there, we all piled into a cabin and then filmed on this property, this farm, for a week.

It was one of the hottest, hottest experiences in my life.

♪♪ ♪♪ Kristian Day: Most recently, this project, I did this documentary called, it just got completed, Somewhere Between New York and LA, which is about a filmmaking peer of mine, a director named Blake Ekhert, who lives in Stanbury, Missouri, who has been making films in this small town of 1,000 people for nearly 20 years.

I had started shooting it three years ago.

And then when COVID hit, I suddenly had some time, not a whole lot of time, I had some time on my hands and decided to finish it.

Cake and ice cream is out the window, we're making a horror film.

♪♪ Kristian Day: I have another piece that is about finished called Fair Town that is about the parking lots of the Iowa State Fair.

And that was also a piece I did with Bruce Bales and John Hennessey Baker.

That was our team and we went out to the State Fair and we filmed all of the yards that people would park their cars in.

Have you had anyone from interesting places?

Oh yeah, they come from all over.

I've had people from overseas.

People from Japan.

Last year we had somebody from France.

♪♪ My name is Thomas C. Johnson.

I am an Associate Professor of Communication Studies here at Luther College in Decorah.

Two of my recent films, Ironhead and Marieke, appeared on season one and season two of The Film Lounge, both of those films being short subject documentary films and documentary being the genre that I work in as a filmmaker.

Thomas C.Johnson: Since that time a couple of different things going both film wise as well as writing wise.

In the interest of time I'll just highlight one of those things, that being the film Driftless by Air.

This film is a short film that very much fits the poetic mode of documentary storytelling.

So it consists of aerial footage, drone footage of this region, this region being Northeast Iowa, Southeastern Minnesota, Southwestern Wisconsin and Northwestern Illinois.

So yeah, been working on that right now, doing some editing of it.

Thomas C. Johnson: And all of the film footage of this piece actually came from folks who did some shooting for a film called Decoding the Driftless.

And for this particular film I actually served as a post-production consultant.

So two kind of films that are oriented on the Driftless, this region that here in Decorah we call home.

Hi, I'm Andrew Sherburne from Iowa City.

I'm one of the filmmakers behind Husker Sand along with my co-director Tommy Haines.

♪♪ Andrew Sherburne: Since Husker Sand was featured on season one of The Film Lounge, Tommy and I went on to partner with another Iowa City filmmaker, John Richard, on the feature documentary Saving Brinton.

Saving Brinton world premiered at the AFI Docs Film Festival, it played at theaters across Iowa, across the nation and finally it landed on PBS as part of America Reframed.

♪♪ Andrew Sherburne: Tommy and I also received a Greenlight grant from the state of Iowa to pursue a new documentary feature film titled The Workshop about the fabled Iowa Writers Workshop right here in Iowa City.

♪♪ Andrew Sherburne: We're excited about this new project.

We're excited about cinema in the state of Iowa.

I'm coming to you today from FilmScene, Iowa City's non-profit cinema, where we hope to get back to showing movies sometime soon.

Thanks for watching and enjoy this latest episode of The Film Lounge.

♪♪ My name is Ben Friedman.

I'm from Ankeny, Iowa.

I am a recent college graduate and an aspiring storyteller and filmmaker.

Hi, I'm Michael Runde.

I'm from Dubuque, Iowa.

I am a recent graduate of Loras Collage and I am an aspiring videographer and storyteller.

♪♪ It was here and then it was gone, just like that.

Ben Friedman: One stolen moment is a short documentary focusing on four athletes at Loras College who, in the spring of 2020, had their national championship runs canceled due to COVID-19.

We got really lucky, to be honest.

The athletes that we interviewed, like we said, were all four of them very accomplished but also great orators for describing their experience.

We're a Division III school and you hear Division III you instantly think like, okay, maybe a lower tier of sports competition.

But you're like, no, no, no.

But then you hear Olympics and you hear All-American and you hear SportsCenter and you're like oh, okay, these athletes are the real deal and honestly would be able to compete at the Division I level.

Michael Runde: Yeah, and when the entire basis is that these four teams were potentially going to make a run at a national championship, you need to show that like oh, they actually could win this national championship.

No one will stop her!

Gabby Noland unstoppable!

Have yourself a championship Gabby Noland!

Michael Runde: It felt like it had the heart in it, but we wanted to basically make it feel like these athletes are rockstars and as cool as they act.

This can't be happening.

♪♪ Ben Friedman: It was interesting to be kind of in the middle of somewhat of a grieving process for these athletes.

And for all four of them to open up as much as they did and be so vulnerable was pretty spectacular, gave us some awesome material that we were able to share.

Michael Runde: Yeah, and it's like, it's always a weird thing too when you are asking someone about one of the worst things that has ever happened to them, like a couple of weeks after it happens.

So if they would have not wanted to be a part of it at all, we kind of would have understood.

Ben Friedman: I walked away I think from the whole entire process having a deep understanding of resiliency.

I don't think I've had something as high stakes in my life as something that maybe they went through and to see that they were putting theirselves already in a position where they knew what they were going to do going forward and that this one particular weekend didn't define their whole entire career was pretty eye-opening for me.

The documentary as a whole was dedicated to everyone who went through something similar whether maybe it's not a sporting event, but lost something because of COVID, lost an opportunity.

I think that can hit home beyond the sport context of the documentary.

Michael Runde: The idea is you want not just the Loras community to understand and care about the doc, but you want other people outside of that to sort of get what these people are going through and sort of get the message behind all of it.

And when it sort of hits home with people outside of that realm it's a nice feeling.

♪♪ It was here and then it was gone, just like that.

♪♪ There's nothing we could have done.

♪♪ You know, I don't really think there's anything in your life that will prepare you for that moment.

There's still something I'm waiting for.

♪♪ To have it all come to a close in such an abrupt way, it's unimaginable.

♪♪ ♪♪ We started ranked number 1 in the country.

(crowd cheering) It was our year, we won conference this past year and we won regionals.

We beat Wartburg, knocking off a 28 year streak.

That was pretty awesome.

♪♪ Down to Iowa at Loras College, Guy Patron, he's the first Division III wrestler we have talked about on this show.

I know this is true, Guy is a badass.

My name is Guy Patron Jr. and I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana.

I wrestle here at Loras College.

♪♪ ♪♪ I think we were pretty confident and excited about coming back and what we thought we could do.

We had four in all-conference, Marissa and Mac first team, me and Courtney second team.

We had knocked off three ranked teams, the first time in history that our program is making the Sweet Sixteen.

We had the best year in Loras College history.

♪♪ I'm Kari Fitzpatrick.

I'm a senior here at Loras and I play women's basketball.

♪♪ You've been doing it all season long, just follow what Jones has told you.

♪♪ Trust that process, it's real.

We were all pretty excited on what we could do.

♪♪ Shamari Scott from Loras.

♪♪ I'm Shamari.

I'm a senior.

I run track.

♪♪ We were doing probably the best we've ever done as a girls team.

We were really kind of honing everything together.

♪♪ The whole season was probably one of the best I've ever had.

No one will stop her!

Gabby Noland, unstoppable!

I'm Gabby Noland.

I have been running all four years at Loras.

Have yourself a championship, Gabby Noland!

♪♪ ♪♪ From day one when he got up here, you could just, people knew.

When I was a coach at Holy Cross in New Orleans, Guy would come over and work out with me one-on-one.

When I got this job I put him at the top of the list just because he gave me such headaches as a coach when I was down there and I wanted him on my team.

He just kind of changed the culture, literally, overnight.

Plus, he's just an awesome dude.

He's an RA, he's in the National Guard, he washes our laundry every day.

He's just a guy that people want to be around.

Kari is a real interesting story.

Her ability to impact other people on her recruiting visit, I remember plain as day, she could do a thousand different things and some of that changed from game to game.

She always guarded their best player because she was so good defensively.

She is super invested, cares about team only all the time and I think having that rub off onto younger players is a really good thing to see.

Shamari has been one of those kids that has been a good Team Blue guy, the big time of the year when it was conference, when it was nationals, he wanted to do everything that he could for his teammates to be successful.

I love that kid and he has worked really hard to get better, to get where he's at.

And then Gabby, the goat term is out there, right.

She was knocking on the doorstep of hitting the U.S. trials qualifying times.

So the 2020 Olympics when you talk about records and regional awards and national recognition and national championships, I just can't find anyone in our history that has had that kind of success.

♪♪ ♪♪ Let's preview a historic weekend coming up for Dukawk Athletics.

We have four teams competing on the national stage -- ♪♪ We've never had it where it has all been on one particular weekend like that.

Best case scenario, wrestling wins the national championship, the women's basketball goes to the Final Four and both track teams trophy.

♪♪ I think it all began on a Wednesday when the NCAA announced that the Division I basketball tournament was going to be called off.

And I think it sent the world into a spin.

TV screens everywhere and it was just, sports are canceled, NCAA -- -- has made the decision to cancel the men's and women's -- -- basketball tournament was about to begin and it will not be happening.

And we thought, okay, what is this going to mean for us?

Nothing about Division III had come to be.

Going into the national championships, some teams are already dropping out.

They weren't traveling, their schools put a ban on it.

We thought okay, we'll at least get through the weekend.

All day we had been getting emails like, banquets canceled, your parents can't come, your parents can come and then your parents can't come, then no one can come again.

We're in the hotel room getting ready for just to go out for dinner.

We hear knocks on the door going down and it's Jones.

TJ called us all into the hotel room.

We walked in and it was definitely like you can tell a change of mood in the room.

I had practice at 4, got into stretching and then our first drill and then within five minutes of our first drill -- The next thing you know we get an email and it says, Division III, all remaining divisions are canceled.

It just kind of felt like time stopped.

♪♪ This can't be happening.

♪♪ We all kind of sat there in disbelief for a while.

♪♪ Everyone just really didn't know how to react in that moment.

♪♪ This is a dream, a bad dream, gotta wake up from it.

♪♪ I started tearing up and crying and that made Gabby teary-eyed.

I look over at them and I just put my head down.

As I was walking down the hall I heard student athletes in tears and that really hurt me, I started to tear up actually.

Our dreams just got shattered.

♪♪ I rise and fall with all of our students because I get to see them at their very best and I get to see them at their not so very best.

And in each way I care about them.

And so it's hard, I take it home with me.

That night when I went home and actually had a moment to think about it, I cried.

I'm crying right now.

After four years of wanting to be a national champion and now I don't get that last opportunity.

I kind of tell myself every day, like oh, it's over.

I looked at Patrick Michael who had been training to try and go to the Olympics.

I thought of Shamari and how he worked so hard to get back into the sport when he had to take a year off.

And then it really didn't hit me until my coach started crying and then I was like, I'm done.

You can kind of prepare for end-of-the-year speeches, I don't know if I'm great at them, but you still have a semblance of how this goes.

There's nothing about how that goes.

It was heartbreaking, especially for us three seniors.

That's never really how you envision your senior year is going to end.

I think it's really hard to explain because you're there and you should be running but you're just not.

♪♪ I think that was the hardest part in all honesty.

If we would have found out on Tuesday that it was canceled before we ever made the trip, I think it would have made the decision by the NCAA a lot easier.

Where I'm probably heartbroken the most is how far could we have gone?

There was a lot of unknowns with our season and I think we were playing our best basketball and that we were confident.

I think it was really going to put something there for history for them and for the institution and then future for everyone else.

It would have been our best winter, spring or fall season in the history of the college.

And I make no apologies.

We had national championships hanging out there.

And those were taken, in my humble opinion.

We all thought that there was a great shot that we were going to have four national champions coming back on Sunday.

♪♪ As a team we decided it would be best if we still went out, got dressed up and made light of the situation.

They needed to mourn, they needed time.

Honestly we had a good group of seniors.

So I told them to go mourn and then we're going to celebrate this season as a family.

We went out to eat, had a nice steak and tried to make the most of it.

We wanted to do stuff together that day, the rest of the day into the night so we were together and hanging out and at least kind of probably sponging the feeling of what that actually felt like.

Before anything really had a chance to set in back on campus, everyone was gone.

And so there really wasn't an opportunity to kind of put your minds at ease, to get back in the regular swing of things.

But it's a bigger picture.

Look at this campus, there's nobody here, right, and there's nobody anywhere on any campus in the country and to understand that, like what can you do about it, you can't do anything.

At the time, people were still wondering, is this really the right decision?

Why can't we play?

I think now it's like, yeah, it was the right decision.

The NCAA taking that season from us, obviously in the end it was a good call for our health, but at the same time it's like very heartbreaking, it's like you were so close.

It was literally just snatched right from us.

My last two years was basically taken from me, one due to injury, another to an epidemic that we can't really control.

I feel like it was the right move canceling the tournament.

I wish that they could have just gone through with it, just that one weekend.

That's the thing, for me it's easy because I'll have 20 more of these.

I'm still going to feel for our seniors probably the most.

There's some days where I'm like, all right, I'm done, I'm moving on, I'm an adult now.

And then there's other days where I'm like, I want to go back.

I've just spent my whole life running.

It's weird, it's different.

I've just grown up my whole life playing sports and I've always been involved in something and feel badly for my teammates.

And just knowing that their season got cut short and for the ones who maybe don't get a fifth year, that's pretty hard.

At the end of the day we had a great season and we were able to end with the winningest team in Loras College history.

Just being undefeated on the year is definitely something to take away and to be proud of.

Reflecting back on our day-to-day practice, the relationships that I built, those are the things that I miss the most I think.

Yeah, you're going to remember the Sweet Sixteen, you're going to remember the Elite Eight, all that stuff.

But I think what is most important is just the friendships, the relationships you've built, all the memories we've made.

When I look back I'll always remember Coach J being by my side and supporting me, always telling me that he believed in me.

(windchimes) After that initial hurt, it was good to see all the programs kind of rallying around those sports that were affected.

There has been #LorasTogether going around campus reminding each other we're in this together and we're all going to come out better and stronger.

Hey guys and gals, I'm Greg Gumbel, class of 1967 at Loras College.

Hey Duhawks, this is head men's volleyball coach, Jeremy Thornburg.

I just wanted to send you a quick pick-me-up message.

There may be a lot of unknowns out there -- There good thing is we can do this together.

Hey, we're going to rock this.

Go Duhawks!

Two words which I will leave with you.

Go Duhawks!

I think that the community showed what it means to be a Duhawk and put their heart out for people for sure.

♪♪ They put out a blanket waiver that says you can come back for another year if you're a spring sport athlete.

It's a tough spot to be in for winter sports because you don't get that back.

The fact that we get outdoor back at least, that gives a lot of us to have some sort of closure.

But at the same time, there's a possibility of not having everyone back because some seniors have to get on with their life.

♪♪ There are some people who are going back for their fifth year of eligibility.

I'm not really too keen on taking that.

I'm engaged currently, I've got a job waiting for me in criminal justice.

I'm ready to be an adult.

For so long I've been known as Gabby Noland, the runner, which has kind of been my staple and what people know me by.

So it's definitely going to be a change just being Gabby Noland, just the regular cool kid, you know.

I'm at City High, my high school.

I'm at the track.

I just finished a workout not too long ago.

We've still got unfinished business.

That's kind of like the message that was left with us.

The next step from here for me personally would be go to the last chance qualifying tournament for the Olympic trials to make a world team and hopefully eventually the Olympics.

It was my first recruiting class overall.

There were even some guys that weren't starters that were just huge for our culture.

They set the foundation, like a championship foundation.

This class, they left a legacy that is just maybe unmatched.

As a freshman, I didn't think that we could get to this point ever, like All-American was still crazy to me.

Now it's just natural for us to take like 10 girls to the national championships, it's natural for us to take like 15 guys to the national championships.

People know Loras and they look for them.

We've accomplished so much as a campus and as student athletes that this doesn't really take any of that away.

Yes, the physical game was taken away and that opportunity.

But we still look back and there's so much to celebrate.

♪♪ The biggest takeaway I'll take away from this is to never give up.

To see everything come full circle has been awesome and I always think back to that time where I didn't touch a basketball for four months and I was going to give it up.

Sometimes it's going to be way out of your control and it's just based off how you respond to it.

When you're living in the moment, you feel like you have forever.

But you just have to cherish it as long as you have it.

My biggest takeaway is to always appreciate what you have and to always value it, cherish it and find the positives in what you've already done.

One thing I've learned in college, whether or not you play a sport, you've just, you've kind of got to enjoy your life and not put too much pressure, too much stress on yourself about the little things.

♪♪ We've got incredible athletics, incredible people and COVID-19 is not going to stop us.

As it relates to the seniors, I think it's important to know that they are loved.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Funding for The Film Lounge has been provided by -- ♪♪ Produce Iowa -- building a statewide network of support for the film community in Iowa.

More information on how you can connect is available at produceiowa.com.

And -- Iowa Arts Council -- empowering Iowa to build and sustain culturally vibrant communities by cultivating creativity, learning and participation in the arts.

Learn more at iowaculture.gov.