With COVID-19 being a big part of 2020 fall sports, there has been many changes to go with the new school year. One of the major ones being sports playoffs getting moved to the spring. After the athletes’ hard work during the sports’ fall season, they will have a long journey of preparation for their playoff tournament. Off to a strong season, football has a record of 3-1 with volleyball at 11-1. With only one loss under the teams’ belts, they have a strong look for what their playoff seasons will look like, but the unknown is still there.
“All we know at this point is the National Tournament is in Sioux City from April 27 to May 1 of 2021,” Kyle Van Den Bosch, head volleyball coach, said. “The play-in match to get to Sioux City would be April 17 if we qualify for the National Tournament.”
With the football team having a couple games that have been rescheduled toward the end of the season, they have only had four games so far. But they only lost to the #1 rank in the nation, Morningside College.
“Hopefully we finish the season strong, so we have the opportunity to continue playing this spring,” Matthew McCarty, head football coach, said. “In an ideal situation, I think we will use the months of January and February to focus on our off-season workouts with Coach Fruechete and Coach Snyder in athletic performance. After spring break, we would likely begin practicing a few times a week to get back into speed for playoffs staring April 17.”
With uncertainty of the future, both coaches hope for the best for their fall season so that they have good chances to make the playoffs when spring comes around.
Volleyball still has their conference tournament left to do.
“The conference tournament has not been officially set yet but our guess would be somewhere between April 3 to 10,” Van Den Bosch said.
“We [football] won’t find out our first-round opponent until April 11,” McCarty said. “So we will spend our practice time fine tuning what we do.”
