The University of Delaware announced last Friday that its traditional fall sports will, as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, become spring sports.
But that can’t just be wishful thinking.
It’ll take considerable scrutiny and management of the situation.
Before the Blue Hens can actually play football, soccer, field hockey and volleyball or have cross country meets in March instead of September, alongside traditional spring competitions, UD must be sure it has a safe and healthy environment in which to do so.
“There’s a lot of factors that we would need to see in place in order for us to feel comfortable,” UD athletic director Chrissi Rawak said. “But we’re obviously hopeful that we will be in that position and that’s exactly what we’re going to plan for.”
Delaware and its Colonial Athletic Association cohorts have begun trying to map out revamped spring schedules.
The CAA only officially called off football, in which its 12 schools are actually full-time members of four different leagues, while allowing schools to play this fall independently if they preferred. Only James Madison and Elon have announced plans to do so.
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That would leave 10 CAA football schools, allowing for, if travel is permitted, a complete nine-game league schedule in the spring.
A regional schedule, perhaps with home-and-away match-ups between nearby schools, may be more conceivable. How about a southern division of Delaware, Villanova, Towson, William & Mary and Richmond and a northern quintet of Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Albany and Stony Brook? Maybe a league title game could even follow.
As for playing the other fall sports, the CAA left that up to league members because of differing opinions among school leaders.
Delaware was joined by Northeastern, Hofstra, Drexel, Towson and William & Mary in shutting down all fall sports. That decision went along geographic lines as JMU, Elon, UNC-Wilmington and Charleston plan to play.
“As long as the NCAA and the FCS continue to support championship tournaments on their normal schedules, we believe Elon student-athletes should have the right to compete,” Elon athletic director Dave Blank said in a university statement.
“We are making every effort to participate in all of our fall sports as long as we feel certain we can do so in a manner that prioritizes the health and safety of all. Should the pandemic situation change or the NCAA and/or FCS championships shift, we will re-evaluate our position appropriately for our fall sports.”
UD officials preferred to set their sights on the spring. Ironically, that’s when all college sports came to a halt earlier this year in mid-March.
The CAA has not yet made any rulings regarding winter sports and its prized basketball seasons.
When asked what it will take for Delaware to put fall teams on fields and courts in the spring, along with that season’s traditional sports, Rawak said that decision will ultimately rest with experts on a health-advisory committee. That group includes Dr. Timothy Dowling, UD’s director of student health services, and Dr. Andrew Reisman, assistant athletic director and chief medical officer for UD athletics.
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Among the determining factors, Rawak said, will be the ability to perform COVID testing, do contact tracing and seeing a decrease in positive cases. The advent of a vaccine would certainly be a significant benefit, Rawak added.
Daily body-temperature checks and masking will also be essential tools, with football also likely employing face shields attached to helmets.
Everything Delaware does will conform to CDC, state, university and NCAA standards, Resiman said.
“We must be able to reasonably meet what is laid out,” Reisman said.
Most important, he added, will be the ability to test within 72 hours of competition in high-risk sports and get results back before games.
The CAA’s announcement came the day after the NCAA publicized its third edition of “Resocialization of College Sport: Developing Standards for Practice and Competition.” It’s a set of detailed guidelines aimed at aiding schools in their efforts to operate athletics amidst COVID.
Delaware football coach Danny Rocco said his initial reaction after scrutinizing the list, which includes extensive and detailed testing and risk-mitigation measures, was “You almost get to the point where you’re like, ‘Well we can’t do that.’ ”
Many around college football have shared Rocco’s assessment, according to Sports Illustrated.
In those guidelines, the NCAA divides sports into three categories that are more stringent than what the National Federation of State High School Associations has imparted.
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For UD, low-risk sports include swimming and diving, golf, tennis and track and field. Medium contact-risk sports are baseball, softball and cross country.
All the rest are deemed high-contact risk — football, basketball, field hockey, lacrosse, soccer and volleyball.
The NCAA publication includes a graph that shows how confirmed cases of the virus began to soar nationally in June, around the time the NCAA expected them to continue their downward trend. That upward trajectory has continued unabated, which led to the recent decisions to curb fall sports.
“We anticipated that we’d be down way below where we are now for number of cases,” Reisman said.
“The transmission rate needs to be under control. We need to be able to provide a safe environment for our population. We need to ensure that with surveillance testing and pre-competition testing and then be able to track and monitor any contacts along the way.”
Reisman feels that will be possible, especially with more efficient and available testing methods expected to become available.
At the same time, Reisman said, “We don’t want to take away community resources from those who actually need it for medical reasons” while student-athletes are being tested.
Also important, Dowling said, was maintaining a disciplined lifestyle. Blue Hen athletes won’t benefit from being in a quarantined environment like some of their professional brethren.
“Students want to be social, humans want to be social,” he said. “We see that everywhere. Making smart choices is important and understanding, especially for student-athletes, that, if they do get COVOD-19, that that could impact not only a portion of their season but may impact their playing career or longer.”
That could also affect teammates or even opponents.
Moving fall sports to the spring gives Delaware and CAA schools the chance to observe what other professional and collegiate leagues who are playing or hope to play later this year encounter in their efforts.
Major League Soccer recently resumed competition with players quarantined and all teams in Orlando, Florida, for the MLS is Back Tournament. The National Basketball Association will soon re-start play in a similar bubble format in Orlando. There are no spectators for MLS or NBA games.
Major League Baseball began a 60-game regular season Thursday at home sites without fans. The National Hockey commences Stanley Cup playoffs at two hub cities in Canada – Toronto and Edmonton – on Aug. 1. National Football League camps are opening this week.
“We’re tracking the NFL,” Rocco said. “We’re tracking Major League Baseball. We’re tracking everything that’s out there and we’re learning from each other. And some people are going to get it right better than other people are going to get it right and we’re going to learn from that.’’
The CAA is one of five NCAA Division I Football Subdivision (FCS) conferences that have announced they won’t play this fall, along with the Ivy League, Patriot League, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference and Southwestern Athletic Conference. The MEAC includes Delaware State.
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The NCAA hasn’t announced any postseason championship alterations, such as a change to FCS playoffs, always a primary goal for the Blue Hens.
NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) leagues the Big Ten and Pac-12 have said they’ll play conference-only football schedules.
The CAA’s move, and Delaware administrators supporting it, made sense, Rocco said, and forthcoming events and dialogue will steer what occurs next.
“This is the right decision to make, the one that we’ve made,” Rocco said. “In due time, the protocols will be different slightly, altered somewhat, we’ll learn along the way and we’ll figure this out collectively.
“But we’re not the only ones trying to figure it out. I think in our league there’s going to be a passionate group of administrators and coaches who are going to want to make this happen, and our commissioner.”
Football players, their preparation for the 2020 season upended, pledge to be ready.
“Nobody knows what’s happening,” said Kedrick Whitehead, a third-team All-CAA safety as a sophomore in 2019 out of Middletown High. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen. But there’s not much that we can do to control that. We can only control what we can control, and that’s ourselves getting better each and every day.
“And I feel like, as a program, if all of us get better daily, by the time this is all said and done, we come back 10 times stronger, 10 times faster, 10 times more aware.’’
If fall teams can play in the spring, some have already talked about the possibility of double or triple-headers on a Saturday in Delaware Stadium involving Delaware’s football team and its men’s and women’s lacrosse teams.
“Spring gives us the opportunity I don’t think we would have even had in the fall,” Rawak said. “ . . . We’re hopeful for the spring that we’ll have the opportunity have fans in the stands.”
Have an idea for a compelling local sports story or is there an issue that needs public scrutiny? Contact Kevin Tresolini at [email protected] and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com.