The MIT Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation (DAPER) has cancelled all spring sports seasons following the conclusion of events on Sunday, March 15 due to the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus), along with winter championship events, including the Division III Swimming & Diving Championships.
The D3 meet is scheduled to take place March 18-22 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Last season, the MIT men finished sixth and had freshman Jay Lang win the national title in the 3-meter diving event. The women placed ninth in the team race and had diver Deborah Wen place second in the 1-meter.
MIT President L. Rafael Reif sent out a large statement to the school community on Wednesday outlining the institution’s plan of attack amid the spread of the virus.
Reif announced that classes have been cancelled for the week of Mar.16-20, the week prior to spring break, to give faculty two weeks to organize a full transition to online classes. Online classes will begin on Mar.30 and run up until the end of the semester, including finals.
Classes will resume this week, however, other than those with 150 students or more, which have been transitioned to online effective immediately.
Undergraduate students who live in an MIT residence are to begin exiting the campus on Saturday, March 14, and are required to be gone no later than noon on Tuesday, March 17. The statement also indicates that students should not return to campus after spring break, and that they should act as if they won’t return until the fall semester.
Per MIT‘s release, there were 41 confirmed or presumptive cases of COVID-19 in Massachusetts as of Tuesday night, 32 of them stemming from a local conference in Boston.
You can read the full statement from Reif here.
If Tom Hanks has it -good enough for me! I say no more swim meets. Death is not worth it
Do we think D3 NCAAs will be cancelled?
Not a chance. If the cancelled swimming how do they justify keeping a 64 team tenement running. More likely more teams will drop before NCAA does anything.
I think D3 cancellation is more likely than D1, if only because there’s less on the line. (To clarify, this isn’t to diminish the efforts of D3 swimmers, but more along the lines of, if they cancel D1 swimming, basketball is probably next. And that’s the big fish in this scenario). If a few more big names like MIT pull out, it might force their hand on D3 swimming.
Yes and no. I agree that cancelling basketball would be the logical next step if D1 swimming is cancelled and that major teams pulling out could force the NCAA’s hand. With that said, D3 is happening in a complex directly next to the NCAA basketball games on coinciding dates (1st & 2nd round NCAA basketball games are taking place in Greensboro, March 20th-22nd). Therefore, it might be difficult for the NCAA to defend cancelling D3 without cancelling basketball.
The entire NESCAC Conference has cancelled spring sports. MIT is not alone in that decision.
Wait for more announcements by this Friday. I imagine no SCIAC schools will be in attendance either. If the Trump address goes as it should, there will be no meet.
I think we should follow the smart guys!