NCAA extends eligibility for spring-sport athletes impacted by coronavirus

staff reports
·2 min read

The NCAA voted Monday to allow Division I schools to give spring-sport athletes whose 2019-20 seasons were canceled by the coronavirus threat an extra year of eligibility in 2020-21.

The Division I Council, which approved the measure, also voted to allow teams to have more players on scholarship in 2020-21 to accommodate both the incoming recruits and those athletes who were in the final year of eligibility in 2019-20 but decided to stay and use the extra year.

Athletes who play such winter sports as men’s and women’s basketball were not included in the NCAA decision and will not have the chance to extend their eligibility.

Because of the rapid spread of the coronavirus and the threat posed by COVID-19, the NCAA canceled its men’s and women’s postseason tournaments this season. The ACC canceled the men’s basketball tournament in Greensboro, then announced March 17 that all athletic-related activities through the end of the 2019-20 academic year were canceled to help mitigate the spread of the virus.

The NCAA in its release Monday said the Council voted to provide schools the flexibility to give the athletes an opportunity to return for 2020-21 without requiring that athletics aid be provided at the same level awarded for 2019-20. The flexibility applies only to athletes who would have exhausted eligibility in 2019-20, the NCAA said.

The NCAA said schools can use its Student Assistance Fund to pay for scholarships for students who take advantage of the additional eligibility in 2020-21.

Division I athletes are allowed four seasons of competition in a five-year period, but schools now will have the ability to add an extra year for athletes whose five-year window of eligibility ended in 2020 because of the virus and canceled seasons.

“The Council’s decision gives individual schools the flexibility to make decisions at a campus level,” Council chair M. Grace Calhoun, athletics director at Penn, said in a statement. “The Board of Governors encouraged conferences and schools to take action in the best interest of student-athletes and their communities, and now schools have the opportunity to do that.”