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The Middle Atlantic Conference presidents met Thursday night to decide the fate of fall sports. The conference announced Friday morning that it will still try to play in the fall, but games will only be between MAC members.
“The MAC intends to pursue fall athletics competition, with each campus formulating plans for resocialization that will comply with local, state and NCAA guidelines,” the league said in a release. “Competition will be limited to MAC institutional members beginning no earlier than September 18, 2020 and with the goal of reaching NCAA minimums in all sports.”
Affected sports at local MAC schools King’s, Misericordia and Wilkes are football, field hockey, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s cross country and women’s volleyball.
In a quirk of the football schedule under the newest MAC alignment, King’s and Wilkes were not set to face off in league play in 2020, but the two schools had arranged to play the annual Mayor’s Cup showdown as a non-conference game.
Friday’s announcement doesn’t immediately rule that game out. But it does officially cancel football games featuring King’s vs. Moravian, Wilkes vs. Keystone, Misericordia vs. McDaniel and Misericordia vs. Keystone.
The Times Leader reached out to the football coaches at King’s, Wilkes and Misericordia, all of whom did not wish to comment at this time.
The MAC’s decision comes just a few days after the Centennial Conference, a neighboring Division III conference with multiple Pennsylvania schools, suspended all sports for the fall.
“The MAC will continue to prioritize the health and well-being of student-athletes, coaches, campuses and communities and therefore will continue to evaluate both internal and external factors and revisit this decision if necessary,” the league said.
“It is paramount that each campus prioritizes the health of its entire campus community,” said MAC executive director Megan Morrison. “I am hopeful that with carefully crafted resocialization plans, athletics, as an integral piece in the co-curricular experience for so many student-athletes and campuses, may be able to happen this fall.”
Teams are expected to report to training camp in August based on each school’s return to campus plan.