New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
‘Strange times’?
Connecticut college athletic programs in flux amid pandemic
College athletics programs across the state are preparing for the return of live sports as they try to move through the coronavirus shutdown.
The words that David Benedict, UConn’s director of athletics, uttered to Hearst Connecticut Media sports columnist Jeff Jacobs are enough to make any of his fellow athletic directors shudder.
“Everything has to be on the table at this point,” Benedict said when asked about the need to reduce UConn’s athletic department subsidy by 25 percent.
Benedict was quick to point out that the hard decisions don’t need to be made by July 1, but for three years. Still, the message is clear that sports could be eliminated at UConn.
It is a move that no athletic department wants to consider. A temporary life without live sports has been challenging for so many people affiliated with athletics at every level. However, there are positive signs of sporting events being held in the U.S. perhaps in the next couple of months. Just imagine the finality of realizing that the team that a student-athlete played on before COVID-19 will no longer exist.
Cincinnati and East Carolina, former UConn rivals in the American Athletic Conference, have announced plans to eliminate sports. Akron, Brown, Bowling Green and Central Michigan will be doing the same. Florida Tech, which played in the NCAA Division II playoffs in 2018, decided to end its football program earlier this month.
Bridgeport, which dropped the men’s and women’s swimming programs last year, and Sacred Heart have placed some members of their athletic department on furloughs. Hearst Connecticut Media reached out to senior athletic department officials at all the Division I and II programs in New Haven and Fairfield counties to get a sense of how COVID-19 is impacting their programs.
One athletic director succinctly called it “strange and challenging” times. The seven universities have different circumstances. Bridgeport, Fairfield and Quinnipiac don’t field football programs and while Sacred Heart and Yale play at the Football Championship Subdivision level, they face challenges as unique as their collective recruiting bases. Even Division II rivals New Haven and Southern Connecticut have their own way of conducting business.
“The greatest challenge we are facing is ensuring that our studentathletes are doing well mentally and feeling connected to their coaches and teammates,” said Yale’s Deputy Director of Athletics Ann-Marie Guglieri. “In addition, we are working hard to be as prepared as possible for the new normal that is coming as a result of COVID-19.
“Financial strains are an obvious reality that all athletic departments need to face during this pandemic. We are going to be as resourceful and creative as possible to continue to do our best to provide our student-athletes with a first-in-class experience.”
Optimism abounds
Each person interviewed expressed optimism that there would be a fall sports season. Will it start on time? Will fans be allowed in the stands? Will overnight trips be allowed? It is still too early to tell, although the recent news that Quinnipiac intends to have oncampus classes in the fall semester certainly can be put in the “light at the end of the tunnel” category.
“The sense is right now is that the universities are trying to get [students] back on campus whether it is in full force or in a hybrid model. I am sure they are still deciding that,” Southern Connecticut State Director of Athletics Jay Moran said. “What we are doing is (figuring out) what does athletics look like? Does it mean with or without fans, what’s the answer to that? Does it mean locker rooms and how we make them (safe with) social distancing? How we clean them? How we clean all of our facilities? Our bathrooms. It is all the stuff ... How are we going to come back and do physicals? How do we treat athletes in the training room now with social distancing.
“I am pretty confident that we are going to have fall sports, the new norm may be without fans, with less travel, no overnights because of COVID and of course for financial reasons, cutting back on competitions, making sure we get the league games in and those are all discussions we are having right now.”
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“What we are doing is [figuring out] what does athletics look like? Does it mean with or without fans? ... Does it mean locker rooms?”