Read more in the Times Union<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe Schenectady Gazette also published the story:<\/p>\n
Area junior colleges cancel \u2018high\u2019 risk winter sports<\/h4>\n
By Adam Shinder \/ Dec. 8, 2020
\nGloversville’s Joey Rowback (23) shoots goes up for a shot against Amsterdam’s James Shatas and Tyrell Douglas during a Jan. 28 game at Amsterdam High School. Rowback was set to be a freshman on the Fulton-Montgomery Community College men’s basketball team this winter.
\nIt will be a winter largely devoid of sports at area junior colleges, as 27 of the 30 SUNY Community Colleges members of the National Junior College Athletic Association \u2014 including all four area schools \u2014 announced Tuesday the decision to collectively cancel indoor sports that are a \u201chigh\u201d risk for the spread of COVID-19 for the winter 2020-21 season.<\/p>\n
The decision cancels the men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball seasons at SUNY Schenectady, Fulton-Montgomery Community College, Hudson Valley Community College and SUNY Adirondack, as well as the season for women\u2019s volleyball, which had already been pushed back from the fall to the winter season by the NJCAA earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we were trying to do a whole bunch of different things to try and make this work,\u201d F-MCC athletic director and women\u2019s basketball coach Kevin Jones said in a phone interview. \u201cMoving things back, moving dates back with the hopes that we wouldn\u2019t see this second wave of [coronavirus cases] happening. The region thought it was in the best interest of the student-athletes to cancel this now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re seeing it all across the country,\u201d SUNY Schenectady athletic director Dave Gonzalez said in a phone interview. \u201cWe as a group, Region 3, have made the same decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gonzalez said that, had the decision been made to allow winter sports to compete, SUNY Schenectady had planned to participate in women\u2019s basketball this winter after the Royals canceled their 2019-20 season because of a lack of players.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s decision affects all of the NJCAA Division III Region 3 and Region 15 programs, representing most of New York\u2019s upstate and downstate community colleges. Three NJCAA Division II programs in the western part of the state \u2014 Jamestown, Erie and Niagara \u2014 were not included.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of the Division III conferences within the region are all out,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
HVCC athletic director Justin Hoyt said that, while disappointing, the decision seemed inevitable given the recent upward trend in coronavirus cases across the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just didn\u2019t look like it was going in a positive direction this winter,\u201d Hoyt said.<\/p>\n
In addition to basketball and volleyball, the men\u2019s and women\u2019s bowling seasons at most of the 27 schools were also canceled, though Hoyt said HVCC is among a handful of programs that is still planning to attempt to compete in bowling this winter through a virtual format where the HVCC teams won\u2019t travel to opposing lanes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working on a plan as a region to offer bowling, virtually, for the schools that have indicated they\u2019d like to move forward with bowling,\u201d Hoyt said.<\/p>\n
For Jones, in his dual role as an administrator and a coach, not having a season this winter is an especially difficult reality to cope with.<\/p>\n
Jones said his F-MCC women\u2019s team was shaping up to have a strong winter, and the Raiders\u2019 men\u2019s program was also excited for its first season under new coach EJ Gallup with a focus on building a roster around local products.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been about 25 years since I\u2019ve started an academic year not welcoming students to our housing and starting preseason, being involved,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been really difficult. When you have that interaction with students every day . . . it\u2019s gone from that to basically nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only athletic competition held at local junior college campuses this fall was cross country, with the NJCAA moving all of its other traditional fall offerings to the spring. Hoyt said that HVCC allowed outdoor practices for soccer and lacrosse, as well as limited football workouts, during the fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt ended up being a good experience for them,\u201d Hoyt said, \u201cjust to be able to get outside and play. The student-athletes really enjoyed the opportunity to be able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
All three athletic directors\u00a0said that a decision on how to proceed with both the delayed fall sports and the traditional spring sports is likely to come in January.<\/p>\n
The outlook for sports in the spring may be shaped by the availability and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho knows what kind of an impact the vaccine is going to have by then,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cWe\u2019re hopeful for our spring sports, like everyone else is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones added that trying to fold the canceled winter sports into a spring season along would be a \u201clogistics nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d have to keep our gyms open 24 hours a day so we could have practices,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s really difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Published:<\/strong>\u00a0Wed, 09 Dec 2020 13:10:30 +0000 by\u00a0d.gardner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hudson Valley Community College is among 27 SUNY community colleges cancelling the winter 2021 season of basketball, volleyball, wrestling…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chronicle.hvcc.edu\/wpdev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}