GLVC postpones football, soccer and volleyball until spring semester in 2021

As colleges prepare to reopen for classes in person or online, conferences across the country are making decisions about whether their teams should compete in fall sports amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

This week, the Great Lakes Valley Conference postponed higher-risk fall sports seasons until the spring semester. GLVC football, men’s and women’s soccer and volleyball have all been pushed back until early 2021, while men’s and women’s cross country will be allowed to compete in their championships in October.

Conference officials also decided men’s and women’s golf and tennis will be allowed to compete in non-championship segments only this fall, and then continue their seasons in the spring, when championships for those sports are held.

At the same time, the seasons for some GLVC winter sports deemed lower-risk, such as swimming and diving, indoor track and field and women’s bowling, will be moved up to the fall.

Conference officials are still mulling what to do with men’s and women’s basketball and wrestling, which are each contested in the wintertime.

The decision to rearrange the conference’s sports-schedule lineup was made by the GLVC’s council of presidents with guidance from athletic directors and the NCAA’s Sports Science Institute.

“Regrettably, we find ourselves having to make these difficult decisions in July similar to those made in mid-March regarding the postponement of GLVC competition for football, soccer, and volleyball for the fall semester,” GLVC commissioner Jim Naumovich said in a news release.

Among 23 NCAA Division II conferences, the GLVC became the 11th to postpone at least some of its fall competition.

The decision will have an immediate effect on a number of GLVC member schools within the Kansas City area. Rockhurst soccer coach Tony Tocco knows it’s for the greater good of his student-athletes but is disappointed — he had hoped his team’s season might simply have been moved back this year, perhaps starting in October.

“You’re around a lot of people on campus, and it’s hard to socially distance in a safe way on campus,” Tocco said. “But, given six weeks, I think we could have gotten through what I would have called that ‘herd immunity’ to at least get people through it, have 14 days (to quarantine) and then be through most of that by the time we started the games in October.”

Tocco, who has won 709 games in his career and led the Hawks to 10 NCAA tournaments and four national-semifinal appearances, said his team hasn’t played organized soccer since March now.

“We’re in an area where very few coaches have been before,” he said, “and it’s going to be very interesting to see how teams respond to this.”