OAC plans some fall sports for the spring

The Ohio Athletic Conference announced on Thursday a preliminary plan for football, women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s soccer contests in March and April.

The schedules call for five games in football, 10 games in soccer and 20 matches in volleyball.

All football games will be played at 7 p.m. on Fridays, starting March 12 and concluding April 16. The conference will be divided into East and West divisions.

Each team will have one bye week. Mount Union, Baldwin Wallace, John Carroll, Marietta and Muskingum will comprise the East Division, and Capital, Otterbein, Heidelberg, Ohio Northern and Wilmington will make up the West Division.

On April 16, all teams will play a crossover divisional opponent based on standings. The two firstplace teams will play for the OAC championship.

The schedules in the fall sports do not exceed the 50 percent waiver so that the athletes will retain one of their four seasons of participation.

Mike Parnell, Mount Union’s interim athletic director, said the conference has been working on several contingencies since first announcing the postponement of fall semester sports on July 24. That announcement, which also included winter sports, said all athletic competition was suspended through Dec. 31.

“Pivoting to the spring was at the top of the list,” Parnell said. “The athletic directors in the conference had several meetings over the last three or four weeks, (working on) what that would look like.

“We settled on this plan, and we’re very excited to share it with our student-athletes at all of the institutions.”

In soccer, the originally scheduled OAC matches in the fall will begin March 14. The seasons will consist of a round-robin, nine-game schedule, then on April 18 the top seed will play the second seed for the OAC championship. The rest of the teams will match up (No. 3 seed vs. No. 4, No. 5 vs. No. 6, etc.) to finish with 10 contests for all of the teams.

Similarly, women’s volleyball will play its originally scheduled roundrobin conference schedule starting March 12. Each date will be a doubleheader match on Tuesdays and Fridays through April 9. The top four teams in the standings will play April 13 and 16 in the conference tournament, and the other teams will schedule remaining contests based on geographical proximity.