Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia has officially canceled fall sports in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The school’s football and cross country teams will be affected.
Morehouse announced the news this morning. The press release notes that athletic programs travel to other schools and “cannot compete without breaking from social distancing guidelines.” The release also cites spectators, who come to campus to watch sporting events, but aren’t subject to the testing and monitoring plans the school has for students and staff to protect the campus from the novel 2019 coronavirus.
Morehouse’s decision will not affect winter and spring sports. Swimming & diving is a winter sport, though Morehouse doesn’t offer a swimming & diving program. But the Morehouse decision is a significant early indicator of the changes expected to college sports in the coming year based on the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.
Last month, the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) suspended competition in all sports for the fall semester. That includes Division II swimming & diving program Cal State East Bay, which will suspend all competitions during the fall semester.
Morehouse is a private historically black men’s college that also competes in the NCAA’s Division II. Morehouse is in the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC).
FEAR is a liar.
Bowdoin College a D3 NESCAC school in Maine announced earlier in the week that they had cancelled all sports for the fall semester. This not only effects fall sports, but winter sports like swimming & diving that compete over two semesters.
Not sure i agree. While cases are up (likely due to more testing), the death rate is down. US deaths averaging about 650 per day for the last 2 months (was near 3000 per day at one point). So while the spread is high the deaths are low, meaning people will likely get it and remain asymptomatic or get slightly ill. Not sure if this is a reason to shut down.
Your hypothesis will be testing in the coming weeks. If what we observed in the early stages of the pandemic still hold, there’s about a two week late between the positive cases and deaths. If the numbers of dead per day stay constant, you might be right. If the number of deaths start to creep up, then there’s a hella problem.
No shut down. They will take care of the hotspots.
Morehouse may very well set things in motion. Very few schools/organizations have the guts to be the first to make what some may see as a rash decision but I applaud them for being proactive vs reactive. Remember how much grief YMCA swimming got for canceling their Spring Nationals in March?
This is the opposite of guts. It is no logic CYA quitting. In March there wasn’t much known so it was more difficult to find facts to combat the hysteria. We now have the facts. About 10% of us have already had it, the mortality rate so far is about 2X the flu and dropping as we figure out how to treat it and a vaccine isn’t coming soon. So our choices are to live in fear of something that has minimal risk for our under 70 healthy population thinking that we are somehow helping others or get back to our lives and treat hot-spots like we would a flu outbreak. Most of us will get this over the next… Read more »
You can’t say we have facts and then throw out “facts” that have no backing. Have you been tested for anti-bodies? Because everyone I know hasn’t. Using studies with a few thousand people will just end up contradicting yourself. If we can’t use death rates from a small percentage of cases so far then you can’t use antibody tests that use a small percentage of a population. We have no idea exactly how many people have had it. I’d also like to hear how you believe the US is handling hot spots because last I checked, they can’t get anything under control.
Everyone thought warm states were the place to be and those states opened up without care. Now… Read more »
Backing? CDC just said 25M have had it. I doubt that they underestimate. I believe based on multiple studies it is closer to 40M. Either way it’s in the 10% of population neighborhood. 125K deaths gives mortality rate of 0.3 to 0.5 percent. 2017/18 flu again per CDC 45M cases, 61K deaths gives 0.14 mortality rate. So Covid 19 is 2X to 3X. Logically we can expect the Covid mortality to decrease based on familiarity and improved treatment to near flu levels. Poor treatment in the early going likely inflated mortality rates of COVID. Does that help you?
MD swim dad. You are speaking to an audience that drinks the NYT/MSDNC/CNN kool aid. They won’t listen to your argument. It will fall on deaf ears. I’m with you.
I hate to say it (for the sake of athletics), but they seem to have made a really smart decision. Deciding that being able to safely have in-person classes are more important than competing in athletics makes sense to me. I feel bad for all the athletes who were looking forward to competing though, that’s for sure.
Hopefully if other schools adopt this same plan and it extends to winter sports everyone will still be able to train.
And Texas just shut down all bars, reduced capacity to 50% in restaurants and just hit full capacity in a major hospital. Florida also almost hit 9,000 new cases by themselves.
But yeah, lets keep acting as if COVID isn’t a big deal.
Feel bad for these athletes. The trickle down effect has started. Everyone on their schedule now doesn’t have this game to play and will need to fill it.
Just wear a mask and be cautious, please!
Hmm, have you considered reading all of HISWIMCOACH’s posts and that maybe coronavirus is actually No Big Deal?
This is an important point. Even though I live in a hot zone with limited ICU beds and very concerned medical professionals who are sharing what’s going on, I’ve made the decision to only take Covid advice from a purported anonymous swim coach and his Bob Bowman-hating amen chorus who’s username translates as “war.”
I’m famous!! You are misquoting me …. but I’ll let it slide.
I actually am saying our measures aren’t very effective. But hey, let’s all panic and cancel everything. Even if it doesn’t save lives or we can’t prove it. Because CNN told me we should do that.
If you saw the CEO of Texas hospital speak it’s misleading in the media. Hospital is not at capacities . Covid is 50% of the hospitalizations even in the ICU. 90% capacity ICU he said is normal. They also are not disclosing how many asymptomatic.
ICUs are high $ investments & are always at high capacity. To free up ICU, they cancel surgeries .