Swarthmore takes ‘extreme’ measure of calling off fall sports
Samie Martin heard the rumors that there might be no athletics at Swarthmore College this fall because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The senior field hockey player from Penncrest held out hope that the speculation was just that ... until she opened an email from college president Valerie Smith on Tuesday evening and realized her worst fears were true.
As part of Swarthmore’s reopening plan for the
2020-21 academic year, Smith announced that there will be no intercollegiate athletics or club sports for the fall semester.
“I just hope that the extreme measure will allow most people to stay safe and stay healthy,” Martin said by phone Wednesday.
Swarthmore will limit the number of students on campus to 900. Normally, there are approximately
1,500 students on campus. The only students allowed on campus in the fall are first-year students, sophomores, incoming transfers and resident assistants.
The reduction in the number of students made it impossible to field teams for the fall. Swarthmore offers six sports that play exclusively in the fall: men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s cross country, field hockey and women’s volleyball. (Men’s and women’s tennis play a few events in the fall, but is considered a spring sport, and men’s golf is played in the fall and spring.)
“None of these decisions are made without a great deal of deliberation and consternation,” athletic director Adam Hertz said. “As uncertain as we are about this disease and the future and how it’s going to play out, this is the decision that the college made with the best interest of its community in mind. … This was as difficult a process as it was back in March when we decided to suspend the NCAA championships for winter sports and cancel spring sports.”
No decision on the winter and spring seasons has been announced. Men’s and women’s swimming traditionally begin competition in late October, while men’s and women’s basketball usually starts its seasons in mid-November, but are considered winter sports.
“Obviously, we’re disappointed,” said longtime cross country coach Pete Carroll. “But looking at the national stats and how we’ve kind of screwed up the first attempt at bringing the curve down, I think it’s the prudent decision.”
Swarthmore is the 10th Division III school to announce it will not compete in intercollegiate athletics in the fall. Bowdoin, Grinnell, Pratt Institute, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Sarah Lawrence, UMass-Boston, MichiganDearborn, Wellesley and Williams all canceled fall seasons.
The College of New Jersey
announced that it will not compete in “high-risk sports” such as football, soccer, field hockey, basketball and wrestling.
Division II Morehouse and the California Collegiate Athletic Conference, which consists of 13 Division II institutions, also canceled their fall seasons.
“I think if we had made this decision three weeks ago or two weeks ago, I thought we would have been jumping the gun, but just in the last two weeks things have changed so much for sports,” said men’s soccer coach Eric Wagner, whose team reached the Division III Sweet 16 last season. “When you saw what happened at Clemson football, with the Phillies and with Novak Djokovic and all these different things that are high-level things and you just think about how hard on a campus like Swarthmore it would be to contain it if something went wrong.”
“We won’t know for a while if we’re right or wrong with this decision,” field hockey coach Hannah Harris said. “I think they’re doing a good job thinking of the safety of the faculty, staff and students first and foremost. If this is the decision they felt was best for that, then we support it.”
The 900 student figure is based on the ability to house students in single rooms as well as the ratio of students to bathrooms, necessary cleaning protocols, capacity to maintain physical distancing in dining facilities and the ability to reserve housing for students who may need to be quarantined or isolated, according to the announcement.
While there will be inperson classes, most instruction, including large lecture classes, will be held remotely. Students who do not meet the above criteria but have challenges learning remotely can apply to return to campus.
No student will be required to return to campus. Those that do will not be required to attend in-person classes. No member of the faculty will be required to teach on campus in the fall, the announcement said.
What this means for the athletes remains in question. Under NCAA rules, a student has 10 semesters to complete eight semesters of athletic eligibility. Swarthmore does not have redshirts and does now allow graduate students to play intercollegiate athletics, much like the Ivy League. A student has to be a matriculating undergraduate to compete.
A student-athlete could transfer, but the landscape is unknown, and most students come to Swarthmore for its academic reputation. Another option is to sit out the semester or the year and come back when the uncertainty settles down.
“Most of our student-athletes are going to have another opportunity to engage (in their respective sports in the future),” Hertz said. “I feel for the fall senior students whose last opportunity this was going to be. My heart breaks for them.”
Those are athletes like Martin.
“I’m disappointed and I’m shocked, but I don’t have an answer to what the best scenario is,” Martin said. “It’s just leaving with a lot of questions and unfinished business. My team was on the rise. We finally had a full roster this year so it would have been exciting to try and make a play at something more than what we’ve done the past three years.”