Sports leagues across the U.S., including professional and collegiate, have been either paused or outright cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
In March, UTM and their parent conference the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) decided to cancel all sports for the remainder of the 2019-20 academic year. At UTM, this affected baseball, softball, golf, rodeo, equestrian, beach volleyball, tennis and women’s basketball.
While most UTM sports were in the midst of their regular season, women’s basketball and equestrian had wrapped up theirs and were set to compete in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament (WNIT) and Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Championship, respectively. Rodeo Week, a popular staple in Martin for over 50 years, has also been cancelled.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), in response to the outbreak, cancelled all of their winter and spring championships and have provided spring athletes with another year of eligibility, but opted not to extend an extra year to winter athletes.
Collegiate athletes are given four years of eligibility in a five-year window. The five-year window allows students to play a given sport for four years at the collegiate level despite NCAA rules mandating transferring players to sit out one year.
According to the NCAA, “The Council’s decision allows schools to self-apply waivers to restore one of those seasons of competition for student-athletes who had competed while eligible in the COVID-19-shortened 2020 spring season.”
UTM sports that fall under the winter designation are men’s and women’s basketball, rifle and indoor track and field. The men’s basketball team’s season was unaffected, as the team’s season ended on Feb. 29 due to not qualifying for the either the OVC or national playoffs. Rifle was also largely unaffected, as their season wrapped up before the cancellation of the NCAA championship; only senior Kaitlin Korinek qualified.
The women’s basketball team, despite falling in the OVC Tournament Championship, still qualified for the WNIT but now will no longer be able to participate. The track and field team wrapped up their indoor stretch of the season but weren’t able to begin any outdoor competitions.
While equestrian has had their conference and national championships cancelled, rodeo’s 72nd Annual College Finals Rodeo, set for June 14-20 in Casper, Wyoming, is still on the schedule, per Billings Gazette. Rodeo and equestrian don’t fall under the NCAA.
