Earlier this month, the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference held a meeting with its member schools about the scheduling of the athletic events in the spring semester. Due to COVID-19, all fall sports and championships were suspended.

The member schools – including Gannon University — have a basic structure of what the schedules will look like, but the schedules have not been finalized or released to the public yet.

As of now, the schools have an understanding of what days of the week conference games will take place.

The PSAC schedules all the conference games, while the individual schools schedule their own non-conference games.

To try and limit travel, the NCAA has cut down the maximum number of games allowed to be played by 15-20% of the usual limit, depending on the sport.

Despite cutting the schedule, teams should still get close to, if not all, of their normal number of conference games in.

For Gannon, moving all the fall sports to the spring can cause some scheduling concerns.

Being in the city, Gannon must make good use of all its space. Because of this, the school holds many sports in the same facilities.

McConnell Family Stadium is the home of football, men’s and women’s soccer, women’s lacrosse, baseball and softball. In fact, it’s the only PSAC school that has baseball and softball play on the same field.

The Hammermill Center, home of men’s and women’s basketball, women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s wrestling, will also have to make some scheduling adjustments to get the games in.

Obviously, all these teams can’t play at the same time, so Gannon is going to have to be very flexible and may even have some games take place earlier or later than usual.

In order to get every game in, Gannon may be looking at sporting events seven days of the week. To make this work, the school may have to move the locations of some of the games.

Baseball has practiced at UPMC Park, home of the Erie SeaWolves, so it could potentially play games there.

Veterans Stadium is another site that Gannon could possibly move games to.

Having football or soccer play some games there could open up much-needed space at McConnell Family Stadium.

While worrying about games is one thing, practices are another.

All the sports mentioned must practice nearly every day as well, meaning Gannon’s facilities, including the Hammermill Center and Gannon Recreation and Wellness Center, will be in use from sunup to sundown on most days.

For the spring semester, spring sports are planned to go on as usual, meaning they will have PSAC and NCAA championships, while also using a year of the student-athlete’s eligibility.

Fall sports, on the other hand, will not have any NCAA championships, and student-athletes will not lose a year of eligibility during this season.

Even though the schedules aren’t finalized yet, expect to see a whole lot of Gannon sports on a daily basis, potentially from the early morning to the late night, seven days a week, come next semester.

The PSAC member schools should be releasing their upcoming schedules relatively soon.

ALEX PEPKE
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