Another Domino Falls: NCAA Season 96 To Be Pushed Back to December Due to COVID-19

Following their decision last March to cancel the remainder of their second-semester sports for Season 95, the management committee (ManCom) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is also looking at the possibility of opening Season 96 to December instead of having it happen this July. With President Rodrigo Duterte approving the recommendation of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) to move the opening of classes to September, the change in the date of the opening of Season 96 is almost inevitable even due universities under the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) are given the leeway on how they will adjust their respective calendars. 

The NCAA ManCom said that a final decision on the season calendar change will be made upon their submission of the recommendation to the NCAA Policy Board this week. In an interview, ManCom Chairman Peter Cayco stressed out that the league will still depend on the IATF's recommendation regarding the opening of classes as well as if the government will then allow the holding of sports events that fall under the category of mass gatherings. 

However, NCAA fans shouldn't count out the possibility of seeing Season 96 open in 2021 either.

It can be recalled that the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) is considering delaying the opening of their Season 83 first-semester events to October this year while the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) will wait until August before making a decision whether to revert to a one-conference season or cancel the 45th season of the league. On top of that, the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) has already canceled all PSC-sanctioned events for the rest of the year. All of that was brought about by the ongoing 2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic which shut down all sports not just in the country but everywhere. And like the pandemic, the cancelation of sports events will not stop anytime soon as another major league is looking to postpone the opening of their new season.

While this means that basketball fans will need more patience in waiting for basketball to get back into our lives, as long as COVID-19 is still a threat to human life, basketball can wait. Sports, in general, can wait. 

Photo is from ABS CBN News