For a vast majority of Division II and III college athletes in New England, the sports landscape has been pretty bleak in this school year. For many of those athletes, that is about to change.
Keegan
“There was definitely doubt about us being able to play without any drastic changes going on with the pandemic,” Springfield College baseball player Jack Cooney said. “We’re grateful to be able to play this spring. Hopefully, we’ll be able to make it through the whole season.”
Benoit
Springfield College is a member of the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference, and the conference announced Monday morning that it will allow for league play in spring sports. NEWMAC members Mount Holyoke and Smith College opted out of competing this spring.
Cooney
The New England Collegiate Conference, another Division III outfit, has also announced that it will play spring sports.
Both conferences will primarily stick to in-league play, and schedules to determine who will play when, have not been released. In addition, all coaches, players and game officials will need to be masked.
Taconic High School product Cooney, who is a Pride teammate of Pittsfield High graduates Joe Traversa and Ian Benoit, said the baseball team got a group message from coach Mark Simeone telling them the news, and that details were upcoming.
Traversa
“As a team, we tried to stay hopeful that we were going to have a season,” Cooney said. “We kind of kept it in the back of our mind that we weren’t really going to play anyone else other than people in our conference and people who had the same testing protocols as us. We knew in the back of our minds that conference play would be the most likely to happen.”
Cooney said the athletes at Springfield are tested every Wednesday, which allows them to get tests back on Friday. That would allow the Springfield athletes to play games on the weekend.
The Division II Northeast-10 Conference had announced in February that it would be having conference seasons for spring sports.
“Oh my God, it was so exciting,” said Ashley Keegan, a pitcher on the Bentley University softball team. “We’ve been working [hard] in the offseason, so then to get the verification that it is going to pay off and we will have a season, it was almost a big sigh of relief. It kind of kicked us into gear, so it was like ‘let’s go, it’s happening.’”
Bentley will begin its softball season on March 20 and 21, when the Falcons will play consecutive doubleheaders against Stonehill. The softball team will play 26 games, with doubleheaders each day.
“I guess we tried to stay positive, but seeing the winter sports get canceled, it was hard to say how much was going to change in the next two months, and how are these schools going to let us compete,” said Keegan, who was a pitching standout at Taconic. “As a team, we said we’re going to stay positive and we’re going to stick together, and kind of keep working really hard at practice every single day. If we get to play, we get to play, great. If not, we’re going to continue to work hard.”
The Northeast-10 does give schools the opportunity to opt out.
Matt Schneider is a catcher at Northeast-10 Conference member Assumption. When he first heard the news that the conference was going to play, he too was excited.
“It is so exciting to have a season. We’re just so thankful that the presidents were able to put a plan in place and give us an opportunity to compete in the Northeast-10,” the former Wahconah standout said. “That was really important for us to play a competitive season in the NE-10. I’m super-excited for the opportunity.”
Assumption will play a six-week, 24-game schedule that starts on March 27 at home in Worcester against Saint Anselm.
Schneider said he had been checking his social media all day back on Feb. 16, to see if the Northeast-10 presidents were going to approve any kind of sports schedule. He said that the early discussion was no overnight trips, no preseason Florida or Arizona visit, and just Northeast-10 Conference weekend games.
“That’s going to be really exciting, just to be able to play and every game is going to matter,” he said. “It’s almost like a high school season. You have to take advantage of every game and opportunity out there.
“That’s going to be the exciting part of the season.”
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March 08, 2021 at 06:00AM
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Local college athletes excited to return to fields for spring sports season - Berkshire Eagle
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