Chapman athletic conference cancels fall, winter sports competition

The Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference released a Dec. 1 announcement confirming conference competition for fall and winter sports will not take place. Panther Archives

All for nothing.

After months of quarantine, separation from their teammates and the sport they love, fall and winter sport athletes built up hope for a potential spring schedule. Athletes began to hit a groove, as practices and team meetings returned to a consistent schedule. But just a few weeks later, those athletes got the news from Chapman’s affiliate Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) they will not have an opportunity to face competition during the 2020-2021 academic year. 

“It was a hard pill to swallow,” said Duncan Heger, a junior linebacker for the football team. 

Heger shared the SCIAC’s announcement to his Instagram story. Using no words to describe his emotion, he added one thing: a frown emoji. 

“In accordance with public health guidance and safety standards, as well as NCAA socialization recommendations, the SCIAC presidents have unanimously agreed to cancel conference competition … for fall and winter sports during the 2020-21 academic year,” the SCIAC’s Dec. 1 post stated.

That announcement officially cements that 11 of the 21 sports at Chapman will not be able to compete during the 2020 academic year. 

Football, a fall sport, is among those 11, meaning the program won’t have an opportunity to chase a SCIAC championship in back-to-back years after it finished its best season in school history in 2019. 

“We came off a great season last year and wanted to return to that,” Heger said. “It’s back to worrying about things we can control … being prepared for whatever comes at us.”

While the SCIAC had been working all year to bring these sports back to its universities, Jennifer Dubow, the executive director of the SCIAC, said recent spikes and county and state restrictions made it impossible to plan for a spring schedule. 

“It is very difficult to see a scenario where the general student population and classes are still remote and have the ability to conduct conference competition,” Dubow wrote in an email to The Panther. 

Yet despite the planned spring schedule for fall and winter sports being canceled, there is still a tentative hope for some sort of season for Chapman’s 10 spring sports.

“We are still hopeful we will be able to have spring conference sports and championships starting in mid-late March,” Dubow wrote. “We will continue to monitor, meet and discuss over the upcoming months.” 

If Chapman wants to make that hope a reality, they’ll need to spare some expenses, Dubow indicated. All institutions will have to meet California and NCAA guidelines with regards to testing, which Dubow previously mentioned in a Sept. 8 interview would cost approximately $120 to $150 per individual test. 

“I’m not sure if we would be able to afford that,” Dubow said, referring to the SCIAC’s budget. “We would need to see a change in what testing costs.”

So while there’s still a path for spring athletes to compete, fall teammates like Heger will just have to sit tight and prepare for a potential fall season.

“This is not going to stop us from hitting our goals as a team,” Heger said.