By By: Kaylee Darnell
Staff Writer
In late August, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletes (NAII) gave each collegiate conference the freedom to decide how they wanted to proceed with fall sports.
IU South Bend’s conference, the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference (CCAC), had its president vote to move all fall sports to the spring semester, with the exception of cross country.
“Cross country is proceeding with their fall season. The thought process behind this had to do with it being an outside activity where proper social distancing could be maintained in both practices and meets,” Steve Bruce, the Executive Director of IUSB Athletics, said.
“Other fall sports are planning on a January start with championships played in the spring. We are hopeful and optimistic that our student-athletes will be able to compete,’ Bruce said.
Since the NAIA has pushed back fall sports, they are now focusing on winter sports and what their next step of action should be.
“The NAIA has now shifted its attention to the winter sports. Within the next couple of weeks, we should receive a directive on how to proceed. My best guess is that they would, again, allow each conference to determine their own path. If this is the case based on the previous voting, I believe it would be most likely that the CCAC decided to move the start of the basketball season into January as well. This would give us a ‘longer runway’ as we continue to navigate our way through the COVID situation,” Bruce said.
While doing their best to keep all collegiate athletes safe, all NAIA conferences are working on their end to let all the student-athletes have their seasons. Any questions regarding the upcoming seasons or other information on sports, you can go online to https://iusbtitans.com/.
