By Jim Fenton, The Enterprise (Brockton)
BRIDGEWATER, Mass. -- There will be no sports played at Bridgewater State University during the fall semester due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference announced on Thursday morning that it is suspending all indoor and outdoor sports, including football, men’s and women’s soccer and cross country plus volleyball.
A decision on the status of winter sports, which begin in November, will be addressed during the fall.
Conferences around the nation, including the Ivy League, have begun canceling their fall seasons due to the pandemic. College sports shut down last March at the end of the winter seasons and the beginning to the spring seasons because of the spread of COVID-19.
“Unfortunately, the highly contagious nature of the COVID-19 virus and the risk of community spread through conference competition proved too great a risk to our student-athletes to engage in conference play,” said MASCAC commissioner Angela Baumann in a statement.
The BSU field hockey and women’s tennis teams, which compete in the Little East Conference, and the Bears' equestrian team, a member of the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association, will also not have a season in the fall.
“We thought for a long time we might be able to pull something off,” said BSU director of athletics Dr. Marybeth Lamb, “but it’s just the right thing to do, as disappointing as it is.”
Teams in the MASCAC will be able to have low-contact, socially distanced workouts during the fall. The MASCAC, which is in its 50th year, said it is also “considering alternative competition options″ which would include moving fall sports to the spring, and the conference will determine the viability of that scenario.
That could mean football and soccer seasons with half of the normal games in March and April if the situation improves by then.
“It’s all going to be dependent on what the state and public health guidelines are about competition in the spring,” said Lamb. “It’s possible.”
Bridgewater State was scheduled to begin its football season with a non-conference road game in New York against Morrisville State on Sept. 5. Coach Joe Verria broke the news to about 80 members of his team during a Zoom call at 10 a.m. Thursday.
“It’s terrible,” said Verria. “They’ve been working so hard in the offseason to prepare for the fall. We have 55 new kids with 12 transfers. It’s probably one of the best recruiting classes and transfer groups we’ve ever had.
“You could kind of see it coming, but it doesn’t make it any better. You could see the kids’ faces when you are telling them on the Zoom call. You could just tell that the balloon burst.
“The health and well-being of the student-athletes and the staff is the No. 1 thing that the schools and conference are looking at. They are doing this in the best interest of the student-athlete and are erring on the side of caution, as much as it hurts.”
Verria said that it would be helpful if coaches will be able to get their teams together for non-traditional sessions on the field.
“It would be without pads to get out there and have them do some learning a little bit, having some fun, bonding the team, trying to salvage that,” said Verria.
Verria, who said he has a small senior class on the roster, said he is hopeful that the players in their final year of eligibility can return to play in 2021. They would have to be full-time students in the fall semester that year.
One of the seniors is Verria’s son, Ryan, a wide receiver who was elected a captain along with linebacker John MacDermott of Bridgewater, offensive lineman Daniel Flores Martinez and linebackers Michael Rosa and Steven Silvia.
“I’m hoping there’s a way the seniors come back so they can play in 2021,” said Verria. “That’s something we’ve got to figure out.
“It doesn’t get much worse than this. You were hoping like heck it wouldn’t happen. I thought once the numbers started getting better in Massachusetts, I thought there was a possibility we’d play. But once Florida, Texas, Arizona and California started to spike, I knew we were in trouble and the country would be on super alert.”
A decision on the winter sports like basketball, indoor track & field, swimming & diving and wrestling will be made in September. Some of those teams will be able to have socially distanced practices in October.
“It’s tough,” said Lamb. “We went through this in March with one group of seniors and now there’s a whole other group of seniors who won’t have their traditional fall season or traditional homecoming. That’s the difficult part. It’s one of the hardest things I had to do, telling them they’re not competing.”