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Club sports are a way for students to get involved on campus however there will be changes this year.
Many club sports are still awaiting decisions by their universities such as travel plans, games and other events. While it is clear that there will be changes made to each sport due to COVID-19, it is still unclear whether some club sports will even have a season.
Garek Peters, president of club golf and senior in business, says that there have already been changes to club golf because of COVID-19.
“With all of the (golf) courses already being (modified)… (and) the social distancing guidelines… there’s already changes in the game of golf,” Peters said. “…(We will) follow the guidelines of the USGA. We’ll probably end up wearing masks if we go just because it’s what it’s come to so far. But we’re just playing it by ear…”
With social distancing guidelines, Peters expects there to be less interaction between teams.
“I can see not interacting with other teams,” Peters said. “Usually we all get together whether it’s at a big dinner, or we all go out together, or just even on the golf course interacting with teams from other states and stuff. The team’s going to be more separated…”
According to Mauresa Caire, president of women’s rugby and junior in manufacturing engineering, most clubs are still waiting on their universities to release decisions and plans for club sports.
“…We’re definitely thinking about how the university is gonna let us continue playing this semester,” Caire said. “As far as our scheduling of games, we haven’t really done so far. All the teams are collectively kind of waiting on their universities to release their position I guess on the whole situation.”
Rugby is similar to football in that it is a high contact sport which is a concern due to COVID-19.
“Well, rugby is very contact sport so with COVID being believably transmitted through this contact, I’m not really sure if we even have a season at all,” Caire said. “I know USA Rugby has already released guidelines as to how we should be practicing right now which include… not practicing tackling kind of whatsoever and kind of just doing like solo drills so to speak.”
President of men’s rugby and senior in business management Jarrod Tayrien is also looking at possible changes due to COVID-19.
“We have talked about some changes especially like going contacts kind of like learn how to tackle and other things especially how we play,” Tayrien said. “We play a very contact sport, so we are talking about what type of rules we’ll have especially kind of back from the summer and see how everything plays out. So, we are talking about what we’re expecting to do. So, we are still in the midst of talking about it, we just haven’t made a plan or stages going into this fall season.”
For Caire, it’s hard to determine and plan for any challenge when there is so much still unknown.
“I’m not quite sure honestly,” Caire said. “I’ve heard… that we would do a non-contact form, so it would be no tackling. I’m not quite sure how that would work. Also, another problem we could run into is travel. Our university could allow us to play but others might not or (might) ban travel… I’m not quite sure again what they’ll say on that.”
It has not been decided if men’s rugby will have a season.
“The challenges we will face this year is trying to get some games and see how everything plays because a lot right now in USA Rugby we haven’t heard anything about what’s gonna happen for this year,” Tayrien said. “…We may or may not get a season. So, it all depends on what happens. We already know one school already dropped out from this fall season… So, we are expecting maybe one or two more teams to drop out. But as far as now, our season is still going (to happen). So, we’ll find out what will happen later on…”
