The Horizon League is the latest NCAA Division I athletics conference to alter its fall athletics schedule because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The conference announced on Thursday that, “if competition occurs,” that it will not begin before October 1 for its 12 member institutions.
The delay in competition includes all exhibition, League and non-League contests in all sports (championship and non-championship). Decisions related to training and practice ware being left to members’ discretion, and it will be up to each school to reschedule non-conference contests.
This will impact women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s cross country, and men’s and women’s soccer seasons, primarily. The Horizon League doesn’t sponsor football, though two of its members do have football programs: Robert Morris, which competes as an independent in the FCS, and Youngstown State, which competes in the Missouri Valley Football Conference.
Men’s water polo is also a fall sport, but none of the conference’s teams participate at the NCAA level. Last season, the conference champions from Oakland held their annual alumni meet on September 14th and its intrasquad meet on October 4th. Their first intercollegiate swimming & diving meet came on October 11th against Milwaukee.
“The decision allows each campus to further focus on ensuring return to competition protocols uphold the Council’s principle of safety and can be reasonably implemented,” the Horizon League offered as an explanation.
So far, only the Ivy League and Patriot League have fully canceled fall athletics among D1 conferences.
Summary of Division I Athletics Delays So Far
- Big Ten – no out-of-conference competition in fall sports
- Pac-12 – no out-of-conference competition in soccer, volleyball, football
- ACC – no sports until at least September 1
- SEC – no volleyball, soccer, or cross country until “early September”
- Patriot League – no fall sports (except Army & Navy)
- Ivy League – no fall sports or winter sports until January 1, 2021
- CAA – no league football schedule, but teams are free to play independent schedules.
The Horizon League’s 12 schools are located primarily in the Midwestern United States. Of those 12 schools, 7 sponsor both men’s and women’s swimming & diving: Oakland, Cleveland State, IUPUI, UIC, Milwaukee, Wisconsin-Green Bay, and Youngstown State.
Last season, the Oakland men and women swept the conference team titles in swimming & diving. For the Oakland men, that was a record 7th-straight conference titles. In total, the Grizzlies broke 9 league records last season.
