The Covid-19 pandemic has put another HBCU baseball athletic program on pause. LeMoyne-Owen College’s administration, after a recent spike in coronavirus case, has announced that baseball activities have been paused for the 2021 season because of an uptick of Covid-19 cases.
Black College Nines (BCN) reached out to the athletic department to confirm if any baseball players were put on pause, but they did not identify the athletes that were impacted, citing student privacy issues. The number of positive tests in the athletic department was not immediately available. According to sources, cases were identified in surveillance testing and daily symptom screening required of all athletes.
The pause at LeMoyne-Owen comes as the Covid-19 case rate is increasing. The region’s positive percentage rate was up and the county’s daily positive rate spiked which exceeded any prior one-day number since the region scaled testing to its current levels.
LeMoyne-Owen is the second Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) baseball program to pause playing the 2021 season because of Covid-19. Paine College shut down the entire athletic department this past September.
LeMoyne-Owen would be the seventh HBCU baseball program to cancel its 2021 season… those schools being Bethune Cookman, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Paine College, Huston-Tillotson University, Texas College and Wiley College.
LeMoyne-Owen is the second Division II HBCU school to completely abandon the season, but it is probably not the last and their decision foreshadows the remaining scheduling uncertainty that dots the conference athletics landscape. Reports are that (SIAC) conference officials may pull the plug March 1st which will shut down sporting activities.
The conversation will always be around how the pandemic effects the bigger programs, but in actuality, it effects the smaller programs arguably more. The Power 5 schools have wiggle room while mid-majors, DII and those in the NAIA do not.