It was announced late Monday that the Southwestern Athletic Conference has decided to postpone all scheduled fall contests along with SWAC championships due to continuing concerns related to the COVID-19 global pandemic.
The fall sports impacted include men’s and women’s cross country, football, women’s soccer and women’s volleyball. The conference has started the process of formalizing plans to conduct a competitive schedule for the fall sports during the 2021 spring semester.
Specifically, in the sport of football the plan includes a seven-game conference schedule beginning with an eight-week training period in January 2021. Each member institution will play a total of six conference games (four divisional/two non-divisional) with the option to play one non-conference game.
This decision directly affects the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
UAPB Director of Athletics Chris Peterson spoke with Greg Horne and Will Jenkins Tuesday morning about the SWAC’s decision, and how the Golden Lions will handle it.
“At this point, optimistically we would hope to take our fall sports and complete some sort of schedule in the spring semester,” said Peterson. “That is all dependent on if we can get this virus under control. Unfortunately, that seems to be a pretty big if.”
If the fall sports are not able to be played in the spring Peterson said he expects the student-athletes to have a year of eligibility returned to them by the NCAA as the spring student-athletes did when they lost their season when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit.
Peterson also gave more details on how the season will play out if it is able to be played after the first of the year.
Peterson said that now that football has been postponed the fall months will be treated as an offseason for training, weightlifting, etc.
No schedule as been set at this time for the Golden Lions regarding teams they will face. DeltaplexNews.com will publish those dates once they become available.
