The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the country’s oldest varsity league, is adopting a judicious approach for its pandemic-era 96th season.
The four sports in its calendar—basketball, volleyball, taekwondo and chess—will all be played online. Or at least, some variation of it.
“This is the new normal way,” said Fr. Clarence Marquez, rector and president of season host school Letran during Friday’s press conference via Zoom.
Management committee head, Fr. Vic Calvo, also of Letran, said the league only had two options when coronavirus struck last year. “It’s either we keep up or rise up. We chose to rise up, we refuse to be immobilized by the pandemic,” said Fr. Calvo.The league opens on Sunday with opening ceremonies shot from within the safety of TV partner GMA Network’s studios.
On June 14, online chess and poomsae (taekwondo forms) will be shown on the network giant’s platforms.
For basketball and volleyball, the league is planning on staging skills challenge instead of actual games. But Fr. Calvo didn’t discount possibility to hold in-person events depending on the pandemic situation.
“Sometimes we feel we are even stricter than the IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Disease) itself,” said Fr. Calvo. “So we needed to be flexible because we have student/athletes who are minors.” INQ