Posted by
Charean Williams on March 31, 2020, 3:30 PM EDT
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New Giants defensive back Nate Ebner made the Olympic team in 2016,
competing in rugby. He wasn’t on Team USA for 2020, but Ebner feels for those
who were.
The 2020
Summer Games were pushed back to 2021.
“Yeah, I mean,
I just hope it doesn’t get postponed for another year or canceled,”
Ebner said during a conference call Tuesday, via Patricia Traina of Sports
Illustrated. “I hope things settle down and obviously like
everything goes back to normal, but I hope that the Olympics is held in 2021
like they’re saying. My heart would be broken for those who have fought so hard
to get to this point and then have it ripped away. I can personally speak about
the rugby players that I had personal experiences with trying to make the 2016
team who were young and didn’t make it, and they were counting on this
opportunity and to have that be taken away.
“I’ve seen
personally the work they put in over the last four years and the years before
that trying to get in 2016 and to have it potentially like canceled and then
then the next opportunity wouldn’t be until ’20 or ’24? I mean, my heart would
break for those guys and girls, so I hope that doesn’t happen. But you know,
right now, they need to figure out things, like the rest of the world is.”
Ebner credits his rugby background with helping turn him into one of
the best special teams players in the NFL.
“Rugby played
a big part in me being able to transition to football,” Ebner said. “You do a
lot of tackling [in both sports], but even the tackling can be very different.”