COVID-19 & College Sports: Spring Season Update
One year after COVID-19 shutdown college athletics, student athletes and athletic departments are still working on finding the best way to go about practices and competitions while navigating challenges presented by the pandemic.
It starts with accurate and frequent testing to make sure that athletes and those they come in contact with are safe. “Right now, we don’t have any different COVID testing protocols [for athletes] than we do for the rest of the campus,” said David Lindholm, Interim Athletic Director at Bard College, “That’s partially because our teams aren’t competing against other schools at this point. The testing for the whole campus is that each student has a PCR done every other week.”
Over at Vassar College, Andrew Goldsmith, a senior on the Vassar soccer team, said that their procedures are the same. “The protocols are to get tested once every two weeks.” Although, there was a bit of a difference. “We had to start with no contact.” Even though testing is important, that is just a small part of making sure everything runs smoothly and safely.
Colleges in the area had to adapt in order to abide by New York State regulations, especially those regarding large gatherings. Even if there aren’t spectators, many teams have numerous students in the same area at once. For example, Vassar’s Men’s Lacrosse Team has 37 members and Bard’s Women’s Lacrosse team has 17 members. These numbers do not include coaches and currently in New York State, there can only be 50 people at an indoor and outdoor social gathering.
“Indoor sports teams are wearing masks the whole time, which obviously looks different and is different in terms of how it feels to compete in those sports,” Lindholm said, “The practice frequency is a little different than the normal year, practice duration is a little different than the normal year. We also have more teams practicing now then we usually do, partially because a lot of these teams didn’t get a normal season in the fall. It’s good, but also challenging from an administrative standpoint.”
Although college athletes of all years were affected, seniors a part of the classes of 2020 and 2021 had the biggest decisions to make. Because of losing out on the fall season of his senior year, Goldsmith said that he “…decided to take a gap semester in the fall so I could play one more season this upcoming fall.”
As for non-athletes who are living on-campus and attending classes, there is fear that starting up with athletic events will lead to an uptick in cases on campus. Vassar College junior, Lilly Wolsk, admitted that “As much as Vassar sounds like it has a pretty safe process for athletic travel, I think any off-campus activities could be a reason for potential COVID spike.”
Although many new rules and regulations have been set, that doesn’t mean everything has been figured out. A very crucial part to a senior athlete’s career is still up in the air. “We’re trying to to sort of build a group that will talk through what we’re going to do to honor our seniors.” Lindholm specified.
