UA SPORTS VB coach: Play most fall sports in spring
Arizona’s Dave Rubio, the longest tenured Pac-12 volleyball coach, believes fall sports other than football should be played in the spring.
Rubio said Pac-12 and more broadly all Football Bowl Subdivision schools face enough of a challenge staging football during the coronavirus pandemic and that Olympic sports such as volleyball and soccer can be successfully shifted to spring for 2020-21.
“I still think you should try to do football in the fall because of the financial reasons,” Rubio said. “You put all the efforts into making that work if it can work, but beyond that it becomes unmanageable because you’re spread so thin,” with medical challenges keeping athletes healthy.
Rubio has lobbied for volleyball to shift to spring in conference calls with other Pac-12 coaches.
“We can’t in one breath say we have student-athlete welfare in mind yet still bring them in with no vaccine for this,” he said. “Who knows what’s going to be the long term effect (of COVID-19). The Pac-12 needs to show leadership and move fall sports with the exception of football. Hopefully by November or December, we get a vaccine.”
Rubio is going into his 29th season at Arizona and 34th as a head coach (Utah’s Beth Launiere is starting her 31st overall but 10th in the Pac-12). He has 527 Pac-12 wins, second most in conference history behind former UCLA coach Andy Banachowski (619).
Arizona began bringing athletes back to campus for voluntary workouts June 15 but stopped that process two weeks later because of a surge of COVID-19 cases in Pima County and across the state. Returning UA volleyball players were to have started workouts this week and incoming freshmen next week, but they now are indefinitely on hold.
UA’s 2020 volleyball recruiting class, ranked No. 7 nationally by VolleyHigh, includes nine freshmen plus three transfers. Among the headliners is outside hitter Jaelyn Hodge of Queen Creek and Chandler Basha High School, Arizona Gatorade Player of the Year ranked No. 20 nationally in the 2020 class by Prep Volleyball.
Rubio is as anxious as anyone to get his new players on the court but not at the expense of their health.
“What I keep telling the conference office is we can deal with whatever hurdles (from playing the spring) for one year,” he said.
“This is unprecedented, we can modify the schedule.”
He also said that holding the NCAA Championships for women’s and men’s volleyball concurrently would boost the men’s side of the sport.
“The first step is saying you’re willing to move,” Rubio said.