BY JENNIFER ROBACK | NEWS EDITOR
With the Coronavirus pandemic still on-going, many college student-athletes are left waiting for decisions on what will happen come the Fall 2020 season.
Many schools, including all the Ivy League schools, Colgate University, and the University of Massachusetts Boston, have completely canceled fall sports, and the list continues to grow.
In a statement released from the Ivy League, it stated that “As athletics is expected to operate consistent with campus policies, it will not be possible for Ivy League teams to participate in intercollegiate athletics competition prior to the end of the fall semester.”
This statement applies to all eight private Ivy League universities, including Brown, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Harvard, Princeton, and Yale have also chosen to drastically limit their students on campus this coming school year.
“As a leadership group, we have a responsibility to make decisions that are in the best interest of the students who attend our institutions, as well as the faculty and staff who work at our schools. These decisions are extremely difficult, particularly when they impact meaningful student-athlete experiences that so many values and cherish,” said the Ivy League Council of Presidents in a joint statement.
The Ivy League schools were among the first NCAA Division I schools to announce this decision and many other schools followed.
The Interim Chancellor, Katherine Newman, for UMass Boston, sent out an email to the UMass Boston community in late June commenting on the disappointment she knows their student-athletes must be feeling with their decision to cancel fall athletics. If there were a way to make a different decision in a manner that we feel is responsible, we surely would, Newman said. “Sadly, the virus is spreading amongst athletes in states that have opened up. We don’t want that to happen to our Beacons.”
UMass Boston is also continuing remote learning for the Fall 2020 Semester. “A remote semester in the fall, while not perfect by any means, is the safest alternative given the pandemic we must deal with,” said Newman.
On July 13, Colgate University’s President, Brian Casey, released a statement following the decision of the Patriot League, to suspend all championships and non-championship competitions for the fall season.
“Due to the many complex logistics pertaining to the prevention of COVID-19 in athletics, further complicated by the element of travel for games, the presidents and superintendents determined this to be the best option for the health and safety of our students and our communities,” Casey said.
The Patriot League is made up of 10 Universities, including, American, Army, Boston, Bucknell, Colgate, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Lehigh Loyola, and Navy.
While many colleges still have yet to make a decision, it is still unclear how the cancellation of some schools and the pause of others will impact the NCAA season as a whole.
As for LIU, the Northeast Conference (NEC), announced on July 9th that the fall season would be delayed and they will re-evaluate as time passes but it was not canceled just yet.