Chapman football readies for shortened season

The Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference devised a plan for the football season to begin in the spring with a shortened five-game season. Panther Archives

After months of uncertainty and speculation, plans were developed for Chapman football to begin play in spring 2021.

The season will be abbreviated to five games instead of the usual 10, and will not feature the typical Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) playoffs. Yet football players, like senior quarterback Jonston MacIntyre, are ready to jump at any opportunity to toe the turf once again.

“I’m most excited about being back together as a team,” MacIntyre said. “It’s going to be a lot of fun to just be able to play football with a bunch of my best friends again.”

Seniors, in particular, will have an extra caveat with the abbreviated season: they will gain an extra year of eligibility. This allows many upperclassmen on the team to return and play a final full season in the fall of 2021, something MacIntyre plans on doing. 

Despite the excitement surrounding an upcoming season and retained eligibility, players have concerns about the potential implications COVID-19 has on a spring schedule.

“I’m somewhat concerned that there may be outbreaks during the spring and we may not be able to play all of our scheduled games,” MacIntrye said. “Hopefully, this doesn’t happen, but it has been an issue in the NFL recently.”

In addition to COVID-19 concerns, players are frustrated that their NCAA Division I counterparts are resuming play much sooner. 

“It was a bummer not getting to play this semester, because we were prepared and ready to go,” said junior quarterback Reed Vettel. “Seeing all the Division I schools getting ready and getting to play was hard to watch, knowing that we weren’t able to get out there.”

There’s little time to dwell on that now, as the Panthers have shifted their focus to their own season.

“We are doing team meetings several times a week, so that we are mentally ready to go,” MacIntyre said. “We will be starting back workouts in groups of 10 on the 19th, because that’s when the campus opens back up.”

When football starts working out as a team in the next few weeks, they hope to build upon their momentum from the previous season, which stood as the best year in the program’s long history with a deep playoff run and a regular season record of 10-1. 

“We are still riding that high from last season and how well we did,” Vettel said. “We took a lot of time off, but last season's accomplishments will still provide some good momentum.”