MAC calls off fall competition
Teams in the Middle Atlantic Conference, which includes Albright and Alvernia, will not be allowed to play games until 2021
When he learned the Middle Atlantic Conference presidents had voted to suspend all athletic competition through the fall semester, Alvernia University athletic director Bill Stiles was crestfallen.
“I truly am heartbroken for our student-athletes,” Stiles said Friday. “Nobody wins here. This is one of the hardest things we’ll ever have to deal with in our professional careers.”
Stiles was referring to the coronavirus pandemic, which forced MAC presidents to cancel spring sports in March and put off fall and winter sports in a vote that was announced Friday morning.
Teams at MAC schools will be allowed to work out and practice, but they will not be permitted to play games before 2021.
Albright College and Alvernia are members of the MAC, which has 18 institutions in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey and which competes at the NCAA Division III level.
Albright and Alvernia both have 12 fall sports: football, field hockey, women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s tennis and cheerleading.
“I feel for our student-athletes,” said Rick Ferry, Albright’s co-director of athletics. “Now it’s the fall student-athletes who are in the crosshairs. Back in March it was the spring athletes. At that time we never thought it would get to this.
“It’s such an unfortunate thing. These kids pour their hearts and souls into everything and these are circumstances beyond our control. We’re going to move forward and try to have as robust a fall practice season as circumstances will allow.”
Albright football coach John Marzka said he wasn’t shocked by the decision after seeing the rising numbers of COVID-19 cases in the United States and the NCAA’s announcement of new coronavirus guidelines last week.
“I saw this thing coming for about a week,” Marzka said. “You could just see where things were headed. I began to think that it was a matter of time.
“To me, the nail in the coffin was when the NFL announced it was canceling preseason games. I’m thinking to myself, ‘Here’s an organization that has all the money in the world. If they can’t figure it out yet, how can we possibly do it?’ It’s unfortunate.”
In its new guidelines issued last week, the NCAA mandated that all member institutions test all athletes for COVID-19 upon their return to campus and then 72 hours before each competition. That could be very costly.
Before last week, Albright and Alvernia weren’t planning to test athletes unless they showed symptoms.
“The positive is that the NCAA came out with two waivers that made this palatable for everyone,” Marzka said.
The first of those waivers is that the NCAA will allow athletes to play up to 50% of their maximum number of contests without losing a year of eligibility. The second is that team activities will be measured in days, not weeks. Each sport will be allowed 114 days during an academic year for mandated strength and conditioning, practices, meetings and games.
“This is probably the best thing,” Marzka said. “We can practice at a rate that is safe and we’re not scrambling to try to get ready for a game. We have a year of development to get our freshmen acclimated academically and athletically without the rigors of a full season.”
Alvernia football coach Ralph Clark and his team were in a similar situation in 2017 when he was beginning the program. The Golden Wolves went through a full season of practice that year before playing their inaugural varsity schedule in 2018.
“We’re in a different situation than other teams,” Clark said. “We have guys who were here three years ago. To those guys, it’s going to be just like it was in Year Zero with practices.
“That’s why nobody was upset. ‘OK, Coach, we can do this.’ Nobody’s losing a year of eligibility. When we get back on the field (for games), we’ll be ready.”
The MAC presidents made the decision with the intention of playing fall sports during the spring semester, even on a limited basis, according to the announcement.
If a football team, for example, plays a five-game season in the spring, each player will retain that year of eligibility. In effect, every player can end up with a redshirt year.
Winter sports, such as basketball, wrestling and swimming, can begin practice Oct. 1, instead of Oct. 15, but their competition schedules might be abbreviated.
Another unintended consequence of the MAC decision is scheduling facilities and times to accommodate every sport at Alvernia, which has 27 sports, and Albright, which has 23.
At Albright, Ferry said officials there are meetings next week to determine where to put another weight training room.
“In February, every athlete in our school could be in season,” he said. “Weight rooms will be a huge thing. We have a nice facility, but there’s no way we can get all of our athletes through and meet the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and state guidelines.”
Clark said it was difficult and disappointing to tell the Alvernia football team that its season had been suspended.
“This was a decision that was made in our best interests,” he said, “to make sure we can ensure a safe environment for us to go to school and to get back to playing the sport that we all love.
“It’s a great opportunity to get us back together, to be able to build our minds and build our bodies and build ourselves up so that we can be ready to play football, hopefully in the spring.”