Ivy League won’t have sporting events for remainder of 2020

There will be no sporting events at Yale or the other seven Ivy League institutions for the rest of 2020 as a result of COVID-19.

“With the safety and well-being of students as their highest priority, Ivy League institutions are implementing campus-wide policies including restrictions on student and staff travel, requirements for social distancing, limits on group gatherings, and regulations for visitors to campus,” the Ivy League said in a release. “As athletics is expected to operate consistent with campus policies, it will not be possible for Ivy League teams to participate in intercollegiate athletics competition prior to the end of the fall semester.”

The decision means all fall and winter sports will not compete until at least Jan. 1.

In a statement, the Ivy League said “a decision on the remaining winter and spring sports competition calendar, and on whether fall sport competition would be feasible in the spring, will be determined at a later date.”

The Ivy League will also leave it up to individual institutions to determine whether student-athletes who are enrolled in school during the 2020-21 academic year would be able to recapture the additional season of eligibility in the event that their season does not happen.

If the impact of coronavirus isn’t under control by the end of 2020, there is a chance that the Yale football program, which began with a 3-0 win over Columbia in 1872, won’t have a football season for the first time since 1918.

Athletes are slated to be on campus in late August, but with no games until January, it would wreak havoc on basketball and hockey nonconference schedules, if there is a college basketball and hockey season.

A season ago, the Bulldogs’ men’s basketball team played 14 games, the women’s hockey team 13 games and the women’s basketball and men’s hockey teams 12 each by the end of December. There are concerns, however, that more than just the fall season is in jeopardy in the Ivy League.

The Ivy League was the first Division I conference to cancel postseason basketball tournaments in March, and soon the rest of the nation followed the Ivy’s lead.

Once again, it is the first Division I conference to make a decision not to play

Arnold Gold / Associated Press Yale’s JP Shohfi, center, holds the Ivy League Championship trophy during a celebration with teammates after defeating Harvard in November. At left is Yale University president Peter Salovey.