In an attempt to meet its annual reserve policy, the NCAA DIII championship committee announced the cancellation of all championship banquets and all in-person sports committee meetings for the 2020-2021 school year. This comes in light of the Coronavirus pandemic, which caused the cancellation of all NCAA winter sports championships and the spring sports season.
In order to meet the reserve policy under its current CBS/Turner contract, the division must maintain 50% of its annual revenue. This became nearly impossible with the cancellation of the championships, which bring in a large percentage of the organization’s revenue. Although the banquets and meetings will still occur under a digital format, not hosting the events in-person will save the division an estimated $440,000. However, DIII is still facing a nearly 7.6 million dollar deficit due to the revenue losses. The format of the banquets remains unknown, but in its press release, the committee said they will “work with staff to explore ways to recognize award winners typically honored at the banquets.”
The division previously announced measures to cut costs in the wake of Coronavirus, including canceling Gameday the DIII Way Ambassador Program, DiSC programming, the CoSIDA Student Program and New Athletics Director Orientation. Additionally, the NCAA committee passed a blanket waiver that provides relief for unspent funds. This waiver covers all conferences within each division and allows for the rollover of funds into August 2021.
According to the CSCAA, there have been two swimming and diving program cuts since the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic including DII Tiffin University and DII Urbana University (which shut down its entire physical campus).
Due to the cancellation of this year’s national championship meet, there were no award winners for swimming and diving. However, in 2019 Honroe Collins of NYU won the award for Women’s Swimmer of the Meet and David Fitch of Kenyon won the award for Men’s Swimmer of the Meet. Both Collins and Fitch were expected to be contenders this year as well, as they were only juniors last year. In a time trial after the cancellation of NCAAs, Fitch swam a 46.83 in the 100 fly, which was an unofficial DIII record
