scorecardresearch Skip to main content
coronavirus

Ivy League, NESCAC cancel spring sports seasons due to coronavirus concerns

The Tufts softball team, shown in a file photo, won't be playing this year.Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

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.

Advertisement



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.

Penn baseball player Brendan Bean echoed the sentiment.

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.

x




Follow Andrew Mahoney @GlobeMahoney. Katie McInerney can be reached at katie.mcinerney@globe.com. Follow her @k8tmac.