DANTE LASTING
Sports Editor
Sports are one of the great distractions that the world has to offer. For moments at a time, fans can get lost in their favorite team’s game. It seems when the world needs a distraction the most, sports have disappeared. This novel coronavirus has disrupted daily life for a number of weeks and has stripped us away from the things that we love.
For the fans, sports are something that they love to watch and invest their time in. For players, it is their passion and for professional athletes, their job. While most professional athletes are financially stable, they aren’t getting checks every week and they aren’t able to play the sport that they love. On the flip side, college athletes who play sports in the spring semester won’t be able to play their season.
College athletes had their seasons stripped away from them for the second half of this semester. Baseball, softball, women’s lacrosse and outdoor track and field have all been canceled before they really got a chance to start. Now the NCAA has come out and stated that they have “granted an additional season/semester of eligibility for student-athletes participating in spring sports.” This should give the opportunity for seniors at the DI, DII and DII level to play out their lost season, but it means they would need to stay at school longer than probably intended. With college athletic programs losing so much money because of COVID-19, can they afford to pay out scholarships for most of these students?
That question will be answered in the near future when these colleges format the budgets for next year. Most college athletic programs have been hit hard because of the coronavirus. The programs, along with the NCAA, have lost out on millions of dollars because of the canceling of spring seasons and the March Madness Basketball Tournament. With that cancellation, we are still waiting on a decision from the NCAA if college basketball players will get another year of eligibility.
The coronavirus has taken so much from high school and college seniors with all the events and ceremonies that have been canceled. Hopefully, this will bring some light to a dark situation for senior college athletes who might not have to finish their college career just yet.