The Ivy League and the New England Small College Athletic Conference are both cancelling their spring sports seasons, the conferences announced Wednesday.
The Ivy League presidents cited the outbreak of coronavirus as the reason, and said it was a unanimous decision. No practices or competitions will take place.
When it comes to finishing out the winter sports seasons, that decision will be left to individual schools. All winter sports are already into the postseason.
On Tuesday, Harvard announced that all classes were moving to an online-only format, and the Ivy League cancelled the men’s and women’s conference basketball tournaments scheduled to take place this weekend at Harvard’s Lavietes Pavillion.
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Princeton baseball player Chris Davis took issue with the Ivy League’s decision to cancel spring sports, saying that coaches hadn’t informed their players of the decision and that the players found out on social media.
Regardless of your views on whether this was a reasonable decision, the fact that @IvyLeague tweeted this out before coaches had a chance to tell their teams directly is disgraceful. Wildly disrespectful to student athletes who found out their season was canceled from a tweet https://t.co/ee9MGPzQMa
— Chris Davis (@cdavis8hits) March 11, 2020
Penn baseball player Brendan Bean echoed the sentiment.
It’s more than a game, it’s peoples lives. This is beyond wrong @IvyLeague you should be ashamed
— Bean (@brenbean28) March 11, 2020
The NESCAC presidents issued a statement about their decision:
“In light of the decision of many NESCAC schools to have students return home and complete the semester remotely due to COVID-19, the NESCAC Presidents met and concluded unanimously that conference competition, including conference championships, will be canceled for the 2020 spring season.”
NESCAC is comprised of: Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams. Amherst issued an order on Monday for all students to leave campus and will move to online only classes beginning next week. Tufts and Williams, the other two Massachusetts schools, announced their orders on Wednesday.
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