Middlebury athletics file photo

Out of fear of the potential spread of the COVID-19 virus, Amherst College is closing its doors, sending its students home, and shuttering its baseball season. The Mammoths' season will be extinct practically before it started. Other spring sports will be shut down as well. Middlebury announced on Tuesday, March 10, that it was starting its spring break one week early, taking two weeks off, and resuming with online instruction only effective March 30.

And in addition, Tufts University announced that "Tufts, like many of our NESCAC colleagues, will not have any spring sports for the remainder of the semester." It also announced that "Following a decision of the NESCAC presidents, the NESCAC league and championship play are canceled." 

The NESCAC confirmed this publicly on March 11. The following day, the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference announced the same, while the Ohio Athletic Conference went further in announcing the end of "all athletically-related activities" for the spring season. That includes spring football practice. The MIAA, MIAC and many others instituted full bans of various sorts, while the ODAC and other conferences put competition on hold for an interim, planning to re-evaluate later in the spring.

The Centennial Conference said that "all spring athletics practices and competitions will be suspended until further notice," effective March 16.

"In light of the decision of many NESCAC schools to have students return home and complete the semester remotely due to COVID-19, the NESCAC Presidents met and concluded unanimously that conference competition, including conference championships, will be canceled for the 2020 spring season," the conference said in a statement.

Earlier, Middlebury had put its spring sports on the shelf. "Effective 10 p.m. tonight, we are suspending all spring athletic activities, including practices and home and away games, until further notice," Middlebury's statement read on March 10. 

The decision effectively ends the season of all Middlebury spring sports, including the women's lacrosse team, which is off to a 3-0 start and is the defending NCAA Division III national champion. The Panthers were ranked No. 1 in the nation in the most recent IWLCA Top 25. 

Amherst, which had already raised the ire of Division III women's basketball fans by refusing to allow anyone to attend NCAA Tournament games being held in its LeFrak Gymnasium either of the first two weekends of the NCAA Tournament, and will do the same for its home game in the Division III women's ice hockey postseason, announced on Monday, March 9, that it was cancelling classes the final two days of the week, and would "move to remote learning" after spring break, March 23.

"The risk of having hundreds of people return from their travels to the campus is too great," Biddy Martin, the college's president, said in a letter to the college community. "The best time to act in ways that slow the spread of the virus is now."

The Amherst baseball team had started its season earlier that day, defeating Bowdoin 14-7. Two more games scheduled for this week would be played, according to players familiar with the details.

An Amherst athletics statement said: "Spring team games will then be cancelled until the situation with COVID-19 becomes clearer. This does not mean the spring season is over entirely. Games will resume if and when classes resume on campus." However, students are being told to take home as many of their personal items as possible.

Were Amherst or Middlebury to want to restart their spring schedule, they would have to hope that opponents will hold their dates open, rather than find alternate opponents.

The Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference suspended all spring team practices, meetings and competitions from March 12 through March 30. "We will be actively monitoring the situation and reassess this action over the next two weeks to determine if further action is warranted," the conference said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Tufts still holds out hope that it could somehow qualify teams for the NCAA Tournament. "We await guidance from the NCAA about eligibility for spring postseason play. We realize this will be upsetting to our athletes and their supporters. We recognize the dedication and hard work of our student athletes, and we look forward to resumption of NESCAC competition in the future."

Swarthmore joined the list of schools suspending all spring-sport athletic activities, including practices and competitions, until further notice. Other schools have announced various closures, cancellations and other plans, including Rutgers-Newark, Johns Hopkins, University of Rochester, Trinity (Texas), MIT, DePauw, WPI, Grinnell, St. Lawrence, Berea, Kenyon, Smith, Stevenson and Hood.

This is just a partial list of schools which have announced changes, and not every school's plan is the same, so please reference a specific school's athletics plan for details.