NCAA gets athletes jabbed, announces February opening
The oldest collegiate league in the country is ready to defy overwhelming odds after announcing the possibility of holding physical competitions in crowd-drawing sports like basketball and volleyball by February next year.
Officials of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Season 97 took the first bold step recently by inoculating the student-athletes of the 10 member-schools from various sports, kicking off the proposed campaign no other collegiate league in the country has so far attempted during the long-running COVID-19 global health crisis.
Host College of St. Benilde will be at the center of the planned face-to-face staging to bring back the thrill of the games with NCAA Management Committee incoming chair Dax Castellano, revealing that they are already putting the pieces together to make it happen.
“We agreed to do it with basketball and volleyball and some online events. We’ll do face-to-face basketball and volleyball,’’ said Castellano.
Although the suggested February opening has been agreed upon on the level of the management committee, Castellano said the final approval would come from the league’s policy board.
The Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) has backed up the move after overseeing the two-day vaccination program of NCAA student-athletes last week at Jose Rizal University campus in Mandaluyong City and at Letran College in Intramuros.
Both schools hosted the CHEd’s “Padyak Tungo sa Flexible Learning: Sama-samang Vaccination Program,’’ which is designed to prepare students in future sports tournaments in the tertiary ranks and face-to-face classes.
“We would like to access all the vaccines to as many students, officials and administrators so we can slowly go back to the old normal,’’ said CHEd commissioner Ronald Adamat.
According to CHEd executive director lawyer Cinderella Filipina Jaro, the guidelines for face-to-face training should be ready within the year after being finalized by the agency.
“There are additional considerations or provisions that we have to integrate to the other guidelines. Now that the supply of vaccines is consistent, we’ll incorporate the guidelines for the vaccinated and unvaccinated athletes,’’ said Jaro. INQ
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