Canada West cuts back university sports seasons
The UBC Thunderbirds football program has a new regular-season format, but not a start date for when it might begin.
At a news conference Monday to announce that Canada West has curtailed its travel and schedules for the coming season, president Clint Hamilton admitted that he remains concerned about whether university sports will resume in time for its traditional fall kickoff due to concerns about the novel coronavirus pandemic.
As part of Monday’s format announcement, UBC football is set to play five regular-season games instead of the usual eight. An exact schedule for the T-Birds and others will be announced as a return to action becomes clearer, Hamilton said.
“Like everyone, health and safety are paramount to us,” explained Hamilton, who’s the athletic director at the University of Victoria. “We’re not a pro sport organization. We don’t have the wherewithal to create bubbles for our teams to play in. Those considerations are not our reality.
“We’re also waiting to see what the academic environment will be on our campuses in the fall. Will we have students in class or will we be doing things remotely?
“I have hope that we will be able to have some form of competition in the fall. But honestly, day by day, the main focus remains on everyone’s safety and containing the virus and not contributing to a second wave.”
The UBC football team played home and away games last season with the Saskatchewan Huskies, Regina Rams and Calgary Dinos, took on the Manitoba Bisons on the road and were home to the Alberta Golden Bears. They’ll now play each team once.
Their first game last season was Aug. 31. Their first game in 2018 was Sept. 1.
The 17 Canada West programs that play men’s and women’s basketball will play 16 league games this season, which is down from the usual 20. Men’s and women’s hockey, which are both nine-team loops, will play 20 games, which is down from 28.
Canada West has teams from seven B.C. schools, with the Fraser Valley Cascades, Thompson Rivers WolfPack, Trinity Western Spartans, UNBC Timberwolves and UBC Okanagan Heat joining UVic and UBC.
The Lethbridge Pronghorns shut down their men’s and women’s hockey programs in April and have said that it was to reduce their athletic program’s operating budget.
“These are unprecedented times and we wanted to relieve members of as much financial burden as possible,” Hamilton said. “We want to reduce costs as much as we could.
“The decisions we’ve made already quite likely have saved some programs on some campuses.”
Canada West will review these scheduling formats next summer, Hamilton said. He maintains that early feedback from coaches has been positive.
“We are all in this business because we value the experiences that student-athletes can receive. We don’t ever want to reduce or limit them,” he added. “We don’t expect people to be happy about what’s happened, but there’s been a strong level of understanding already that we’re in this together.”
UBC athletic director Kavie Toor says that his group is currently working on a return to action, but cautioned that it will need to be approved by the health authority. He did say that it would include provisions to have fans at games, albeit with social distancing measures in place.
“I can’t see why we couldn’t come up with a plan to do that,” Toor said of having fans at games. “We could close off certain sections, we could have fans sit in every other row or whatever it took. I expect us to have some level of spectator engagement. I think we’ll start to explore what that could look like and what the best practices are.”