All fall sports in Augustana’s athletic conference were postponed until spring because of safety concerns from the COVID-19 outbreak. This decision was made on July 27, 2020 by the CCIW. Now that we are in the spring season, all fall sports and spring sports are trying to squish their practice time and games all into one official season.
Spring and fall seasons are both greatly affected by the moving of the fall season. Spring seasons, however, get priority on practice time and game days because of their lack of a season last year. The gym and fields always have a team on them, but Augustana has worked on trying to accomodate for every sport as well as keeping up with COVID-19 guidelines.
So far, this “fall” season has relaxed some COVID-19 guidelines. Now, fans are allowed to come to home games. Each member on the team gets four family members or people who are emotionally related to them as guests. The fans must follow all COVID-19 guidelines such as wearing a mask and socially distancing from other fans. This is a relatively recent update as no spectators were allowed before.
Moving fall sports to spring means that most teams will have less games, meets and matches than they usually do. Most fall season sports are getting less games but are still presented with the opportunity to play. The football season, for example, only has three games this spring season.
Nathan Waltrip, a sophomore on the Augie football team spoke about the fall season being pushed to the spring and how it has affected him and his team. “I think the “fall” season gave us a good opportunity to pick up a bunch of things quickly and have a lot of time for practice. The coaching staff and team did a good job with adjusting and planning in order for us to have a successful season,” Waltrip said.
Michael Gille, a junior on the Augie cross country team talked about his experience of moving their season. Cross country does not get an official season this spring as track will be competing.
“As a whole, the team did well and it was a hard adjustment at first with not being able to compete, but it definitely was an opportunity to try new things and to grow as a team,”Gille said.
The plans for next year’s season are unknown as of now, but faculty plans to have all in-person classes and hopefully normal seasons for student athletes.