MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — With the fate of the 2020 college football season being discussed almost daily at the national level, other fall sports are anxiously awaiting word on how — or if — their seasons will play out due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the financial impact football has on most athletic departments, Olympic and other non-revenue sports are still keeping a close eye on how the football season is handled, including WVU women’s soccer coach Nikki Izzo-Brown.
“Like all of us, we know how important football is, and not my football,” she said. “I think we all understand and respect what football does for us. What I feel in this pandemic is watching what they are going to do with football, then after that, we will kind of fall in line and see where we fall with women’s soccer. I know all our associations, our women’s soccer chairs and Big 12 chairs are making sure that we’re thinking collectively and being safe and healthy first, but once football goes off … we’re going to have a season, but we’re just gonna have to wait to see what kind of season that looks like what that season looks like, what segments of the season and how long.”
For Izzo-Brown, her concerns go a bit deeper, especially with what her players are doing during their down time. In mid-March, the Mountaineers were in the middle of their spring season and getting set for spring break when news came down that all Big 12 sports were indefinitely halted. Echoing new men’s soccer coach Dan Stratford, Izzo-Brown knows time lost in the spring could be highly detrimental to the team’s overall development.
“Not that I have favorite parts of our season, but I just love developing my players,” she said. “When you’re in the fall season, it’s about developing our system of play and about dealing with opposing teams’ system of play. Our spring season is a lot about our team concept and individual concepts. I really miss maximizing my athletes’ potential and really developing them. That’s what really motivates me as a coach to have no regrets when they graduate.”
With missing spring camp, the players were not able to work on conditioning or able to get in the weight room as much as they need to. Izzo-Brown referenced Germany’s Bundesliga league, which last week was the first to return to play, though without fans. On the first weekend, 14 players went down with injuries (mostly muscular) and were unable to return to their respective games.
Without access to equipment for many of her players during shutdowns and the social distancing phase, Izzo-Brown is worried injuries will pile up if teams are rushed back too quickly.
“That’s been a huge concern of mine because of the spring season and how we’re in the weight room, we’re developing the athlete physically, injury prevention,” she said. “So we missed all of that, right? Then you move into the summer months and they can’t play right now. Some kids don’t have any access to weights or anything like that. That cutting, that acceleration, deceleration, soft tissue injuries were something I was looking at, and unfortunately that’s exactly what happened.
“We’re doing everything we can to motivate the athlete and to make sure they understand that when it’s time to go, it’s go time and that self-motivation piece is huge.”
Getting players back to campus could also pose a challenge. There are five from Canada, two from England and one from Spain, but Izzo-Brown is confident she will have a full roster when given the OK. Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said last week the conference needs to be up and running by mid-July for the college football season to begin on time, so a similar timeline should be expected for women’s soccer.
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