The 2020-21 NCAA hockey season is going to look a lot different. That’s just the reality of the COVID-19 era. On Monday, more news trickled down regarding colleges taking the fall semester off when it comes to sports. Bowdoin College, located in Brunswick, Maine, announced on Monday that the 2020-21 hockey season won’t begin until January 1st, at best.
In a letter obtained by USCHO.com, Bowdoin President Clayton Rose discussed the plan for athletics.
“Athletics is an important part of the Bowdoin experience for so many of our students. Unfortunately, given that we will not have all students on campus in the fall, we will not be participating in fall and winter varsity sports during the fall semester. The New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) is developing plans for fall, winter, and spring sports regarding the ways in which coaches will be permitted to engage with their teams, and we anticipate providing opportunities for our coaches to work with their student-athletes from each sport season in the fall. The conference’s most recent statement can be found later in this message.
“As I have already noted, I am hopeful that there will be an opportunity for the winter, spring, and possibly fall varsity athletes to participate and compete in some form after January 1.”
Bowdoin is not the only college that will be dark when it comes to athletics in the fall and early winter. UMass-Boston announced recently that the fall semester will be done remotely, and that sports teams will NOT compete during the fall semester. They too have a women’s hockey program that will go dormant for at least a semester.
In Canada, the University of Alberta recently announced that a number of sports, including their dominant men’s and women’s hockey teams, will not compete in any capacity in 2020-21.
The Division 1 level hasn’t been overly impacted yet, but that could change in the coming days and weeks. According to a source close to the situation, teams in Hockey East are aware of their schedule for the 2020-21 season, and the plan as of now is to play a normal season. At least one team in the conference, however, is waiting to release its schedule as they debate about an early season flight to the mid-west.
