Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Hendrix football digests bad news
The Southern Athletic Association’s decision to suspend all conference athletic competition this fall wasn’t the news Hendrix College football Coach Buck Buchanan wanted to hear Thursday evening.
But the announcement didn’t surprise him.
“I’m not shocked about it at all,” he said. “Now, if you would’ve asked me two weeks ago if I thought the season would be suspended, I would’ve been like ‘ Nah, we’re playing football this fall, we’re coming in.’ But honestly, with [SAA member] Rhodes College doing what they did [Wednesday] when they canceled their fall classes, I think that was a slippery slope.”
The d e - cision from the SAA, an NCAA Division III conference, falls in line with what several other conferences over the coronavirus pandemic. Other Division III leagues such as the Centennial Conference and the New England Small College Athletic Conference have either suspended or canceled
fall competition as well. The Eastern Collegiate Football Conference will not play a conference schedule, but left open the opportunity for its teams to play nonconference games.
The SAA — which includes Hendrix, Berry College, Birmingham-Southern, Centre College, Millsap College, Oglethorpe University, Rhodes and Sewanee-The University of the South — released a statement June 8 indicating the conference’s presidents intended to have athletics played in the fall based on the advice they’d gotten from federal and state public health officials, government authorities and NCAA specialists.
It wasn’t until the SAA president’s council met Thursday afternoon that a decision was handed down.
Buchanan, who is entering his eighth season at Hendrix, said he was hopeful his team would get a chance to play a fall schedule, but he remained skeptical because of what the virus had caused other conferences to do.
Players have been allowed to return to campuses for voluntary fall workouts since June 1, but aside from a few of his local team members, Buchanan hadn’t seen the majority of his players. The Warriors were slated to report Aug. 9.
“We haven’t seen our kids since March 13 or 14,” he said. “This has been the longest spring break ever. You miss the kids, you miss the team.
“That’s probably the hardest thing. You want the kids back, especially the juniors and seniors who aren’t used to being home this long.”
Buchanan said he wasn’t opposed to having the season moved to the spring. The SAA’s release about the postponement didn’t state when fall sports might resume.
“Our goal is to play as many contests as we can, and I told my guys that when I talked to them [Thursday],” said Buchanan, who led Hendrix to a 7-3 record in 2019. “I couldn’t guarantee them that we’d play any in the fall, with the way things were going. So possibly moving it to the spring is our best chance to play the most amount of games.
“But I just try to look at it as the glass being half full. If that move is made, we’ll have a chance to have the freshmen in here and be together in the fall. If we can make it through the fall without any problems, we know we can play football in the spring.”
The Warriors are returning 22 seniors, but the postponement could throw a wrench into the their plans.
“We’ve got a few guys that are graduating early,” Buchanan said. “I’ve got to figure out how the NCAA is going to view that, and whether they’d let them play even though they would’ve already graduated.
“It’s not the kids’ fault. Don’t punish them for having high academics and graduating early. So there may be a kink in there. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”