As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Camosun Chargers have decided to cancel their fall season. The Camosun Chargers are made up of the women’s and men’s volleyball teams, the women’s and men’s basketball teams, and the golf team.
Camosun vice president of student experience Heather Cummings says that the decision is a “huge disappointment.”
“These are students who, that’s their passion, that’s what makes the whole student experience meaningful to them,” she says. “We strive to emphasize the fact that [as] student athletes they’re students first and athletes second, but the reality is that the athletic work is where the heart is.”
Cummings says that the Chargers are trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation.
“We’re looking at this as a well-deserved pause, to be able to rally, build in some infrastructure so that when we’re ready to compete we’re going to be stronger, faster, better at everything,” she says. “We took the disappointment, and now we’re moving towards making improvements.”
The Chargers’ decision to cancel their season was a result of the Pacific Western Athletic Association (PACWEST) and the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA), both of which the Chargers are a part of, cancelling their seasons.
“We didn’t want to make a college decision until the league had had the opportunity to collectively find a solution to the question of how we could still have competitive play and meet the health and safety requirements, and they were unable to do that,” Cummings says. “Once they made their decision, frankly, our decision was fairly easy, because without the league, Camosun doesn’t have a competitive program.”
Despite the season’s cancellation, Camosun is committed to fulfilling scholarships and other financial awards.
“Any scholarships we’ve offered athletes, we’re going to honour those, because they accepted their offer at Camosun because of that offer; for us to rescind it by a decision that the athlete had no control over, it just [isn’t] fair,” says Cummings. “These are students that literally give up 20-plus weekends a year, give hundreds and hundreds of hours to training and competition a year, and it’s for a $1,000 or $1,500 scholarship, so for that time and energy the athletes give to the Chargers brand, we’re going to at least do our part to honour the promises we’ve made.”
Going forward, Cummings says that all Chargers sports may tentatively return for the winter 2021 season, despite prior reporting that golf was cancelled for the full year. For the time being, though, nothing is concrete.
“At this time there’s no plan to [resume], but the door remains open,” she says.
Under ordinary CCAA rules, athletes have a maximum of five years within which they are eligible to play competitively, but a new allowance for the COVID-19 crisis has exempted this year from counting toward that limited timeframe.
“It’s an incentive for players to still compete and know that even if it’s an abbreviated season and there’s no championship, they’re not using that year of eligibility on less of an athletic experience; they get to hold onto it for something else,” says Cummings.
Despite the current setback, Cummings is confident that the Chargers will be prosperous.
“We have an extraordinary competitive Chargers program, we’re one of the most successful brands in the PACWEST. I don’t anticipate our current pandemic is going to change that, and if anything, I think we’re going to come out stronger,” she says. “I’m very excited about what the future’s going to hold; we’ve just got to get through this next period of uncertainty, and we’ll be very excited to welcome our fans back, and demonstrate how great our Chargers teams are.”