COM opting out of Spring 1 season sports
With coronavirus case numbers still spiking across the state, the College of Marin athletic department announced on Monday that it’s opting out of all Spring 1 sports for the upcoming season.
The alternative calendar for junior college sports would have seen COM’s Spring 1 season start in early February with men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer, women’s water polo and women’s volleyball.
“The biggest thing is we lean on our county and the other colleges in our conference lean on their counties,” COM athletic director Ryan Byrne said. “If everyone is in (the purple tier) and the forecast is that things are not gonna improve markedly until January, it’s pretty tough going into the spring saying we’re going to be competing when we’re technically not allowed to do anything indoors.
“The county data is really the biggest thing. … Ultimately, we rely on the experts in the county to make the determination of
what activities are safe. If us and the all the surrounding counties and the rest of the state are in purple — we ran out of time. So now the next step is focusing on trying to get the Spring 2 sports going.”
COM basketball coach Scott Thom said he remains hopeful the team can resume some basketball activities and help players move on to play at the next level even though the season has been canceled.
“We’re still hopeful there might be some nontraditional season stuff,” Thom said. “Even if we’re doing intra- squad scrimmages in the gym, we can use our film system to send that to four-year college coaches.”
The men’s basketball season was set to tip off on Feb. 6 with a home game against Skyline. The team was able to finish its 2019-20 schedule with a 14-13 record before the pandemic shut down sports in early March.
“We are here to serve students and help them reach their goals, which is usually to transfer to a four-year college and hopefully compete at the next level,” Byrne said. “I really feel for our fall sport student-athletes, especially our sophomores.”
The basketball team had been doing some socially distant work on outdoor courts earlier in the fall but stopped doing that about three weeks ago, Thom said.
“The No. 1 priority has been — since we started school and workouts outside with all the sports with limited numbers — is student-athletes’ safety first,” Thom said. “They’re making the correct decision on maintaining that as priority No. 1. As coaches you’re just hopeful you can eventually get back in the gym with your student-athletes to give them a sense of normalcy and allow them to have that positive outlet through athletics.”
COM has set a date of Feb. 26 to determine the fate of the Spring 2 sports, including baseball, swimming and beach volleyball.
Baseball is considered a minimal- contact sport while swimming is considered a non- contact sport, meaning those sports could face less restrictions.
“Our mantra for our studentathletes during the pandemic has been ‘ The goal is still the goal’,” Byrne said. “Going forward, we need to find creative ways to keep students on track and promote them to fouryear institutions so they can still reach their goals.”