The NCAA released a new, updated set of recommendations for the return to athletic practice and competition on Thursday. This is the third set of guidelines that have been released by the organization that leads most of the country’s varsity collegiate athletics.
The guidelines were put together by the NCAA Sport Science Institute and titled the Resocialization of Collegiate Sport: Developing Standards for Practice and Competition. These new guidelines are an extension on previous recommendations designed to help minimize the spread of COVID-19 during a return to NCAA competition and practice.
The guidelines opened on a bleak note, showing a graph from Johns Hopkins University highlighting that the initial trend of a decline in cases of COVID-19 that the NCAA had planned for was not happening, with the number of cases instead spiking.
While the recommendations cover every aspect of the return to sport, one important note that it touches on is the possibility of the need to cancel NCAA competition. This is the first time that the NCAA has made mention of this being a potential outcome of the current pandemic. While the guidelines don’t establish any set occurrence that could require such cancellation, it does discuss the need for schools to remain in communication with public health officials to take circumstances within the community into consideration.
Some examples that the guidelines list that may require athletics to be canceled or put on hold are:
- A lack of ability to isolate new positive cases or quarantine high contact risk cases on campus.
- Unavailability or inability to perform symptomatic, surveillance and pre-competition testing when warranted and as per recommendations in this document.
- Campuswide or local community test rates that are considered unsafe by local public health officials.
- Inability to perform adequate contact tracing consistent with governmental requirements or recommendations.
- Local public health officials stating that there is an inability for the hospital infrastructure to accommodate a surge in hospitalizations related to COVID-19.
The guidelines also establish a list of recommendations that schools should follow in order to potentially minimize the spread of the virus. These recommendations include: daily self-health checks, use of face coverings during training, competition, and daily life, well establish testing strategies, and testing and results for athletes competing in “high-risk sports” within 72 hours of competition.
High-risk sports, according to the NCAA, include football, basketball, water polo, and soccer, among others. Swimming and diving fall into the “low risk” category, due largely in part to the minimal amount of contact between athletes during competition. In the NCAA’s document swimming is identified specifically as a low-risk sport; however, it also points out that many aspects of training, such as dryland, stretching, or trampoline for divers, could fall into the high-risk category.
The NCAA also proposed that the risk of the spread of COVID-19 could be reduced via outdoor training due to the increased risk of transmission in poorly ventilated areas. For sports such as football, this can be easily accomplished. Swimming, on the other hand, would struggle to move training outdoors as many universities lack outdoor pools or are located in climates ill-suited for training during the winter months that make up the majority of the swim season.
While the NCAA has been providing ruling and guidelines for all teams across the country, many conferences have also chosen to make adjustments of their own. Eight Division 1 conferences have already altered their athletics schedule, with some, such as the Ivy League, going so far as to change winter sports as well as fall sports.
Summary of Division I Athletics Delays So Far
- Big Ten – no out-of-conference competition in fall sports
- Pac-12 – no out-of-conference competition in soccer, volleyball, football
- ACC – no sports until at least September 1
- SEC – no volleyball, soccer, or cross country until “early September”
- Patriot League – no fall sports (except Army & Navy)
- Ivy League – no fall sports or winter sports until January 1, 2021
- CAA – no league football schedule, but teams are free to play independent schedules.
- Horizon League – no fall sports until October 1
Link to NCAA source please.
We live under tyranny
Our daughter will be a freshman this Fall, swimming for a D2 college. No word from college yet about classes or the team. If classes are off line and swim team will not compete, we are not paying $15,000 for off line classes. But, again, we have no idea what they will do yet.
*online classes
https://www.assumptiongreyhounds.com/general/2019-20/releases/20200716kugamc
As a (fall sport) college athlete at a fairly large D1 school, the guidelines the school issued us are virtually unattainable (how are we supposed to control who our housemates come into contact with when they have essential jobs?? Or encouraging us to take advantage of delivery services…bruh were poor college kids) not to mention the fact that college students are historically risky and disobedient. I’ve already seen snap stories of players who are already back partying amongst teams. My school has also already made the bold choice to not allow students back to campus unless they’re athletes or facing a circumstance such as homelessness or major lack of resources, meaning they’re hoping they’ll have around 100-200 people living in… Read more »
That’s a really good take. Thanks for sharing your insights.
as we know covid is just a hysteria, even the flu is worse
Yes Sam, for certain demographics, but not all demographics, the flu is indeed worse. Don’t ask me for my source. You provide me a source showing that Covid is worse for younger people.
And yes, there is a lot of unnecessary hysteria surrounding Covid
I won’t give up on you Sam. Here, read something that may not agree with your current opinion:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/17/stop-stealing-our-childrens-youth-in-the-name-of-their-grandparents/
We are stealing our children’s youth and ultimately will be stealing their adulthood, because they will lack the education and social skills to succeed, and we are saddling them with a greater and greater amount of debt as we destroy our economy. Disrupting schooling also forces parents to try to homeschool their children and work their job at the same time.
The effects will be more pronounced in poor communities that lack the technical infrastructure to allow children to access and be successful in distance learning. For the social justice warriors who have understandably… Read more »
Strange that article was in the federalist. Since their start in 2014 they have never been know for positing articles with bad, inconsistent, or blatently false information. Very good source to reference – well done!
Give me CNNs rating from Media Bias now.
The big issue is it’s going to come down to costs for such frequent testing. Will schools have to pay for testing, will the SA’s insurance be billed? Those costs alone could cause institutions to shut down competitions.
…and will schools/conferences with different testing standards compete against each other. That’s quickly becoming a major sticking point with football.
Addressed where you have strong conferences and standards and decide to not play out of conference.
Even as a college coach who wants a swimming season and knows collegiate athletics & SA enrollment are dire to majority of higher ed institutions, this is our reality. The Old Dominion AD said some impactful stuff back in May and I think he is right.
https://www.pilotonline.com/sports/vp-sp-odu-athletics-20200508-nfcfomt6nrbnlmxqcgcwwysrdm-story.html
Join me soon… I will be building the first swimming pool in space
What if roster sizes were reduced? Most conferences have an 18 or 26 spot limit, some teams carry into the high 40s and above. That means 20+ spots are extra on a team. I know there are good reasons to carry a few extra, I’m talking about the double digit extra spots.
Reduce numbers, limit exposure, ease the budget. A uni could save 50k plus in expenses per spot. Each conference puts out the total investment numbers in each athlete. The numbers are extraordinary in the Power 5. If an AD is looking at cutting a team, the one with 20+ extra kids not scoring a point or ever seeing a travel bus may be an easy target. Not… Read more »
One problem with reducing the roster is that potentially a lot of those students that are going to an out of state school, or private school, just to swim there and say they do not get any athletic scholarship, then might decide to transfer to an in-state school because if they can not swim anyway why spend the extra money. Yeah the athletic department might save money but the school loses the tuition.
I agree with you that there are not easy answers.
Depends on what level you are talking about.
At the D2 and D3 level (maybe even some smaller D1s), schools are using swimming for enrollment. Big rosters are the point. They see that as revenue generation, not just an expense.
At the D1 level, you’d be talking about eliminating the kids that are actually paying more tuition. On the women’s side of the equation, most universities want these teams to have large rosters, so they can balance out football, for Title IX purposes. Managing the size of travel squads or operational expenses in general makes sense, but I think making that all about roster reduction misses the mark.
Give the coaches reduced budgets and let them be… Read more »