The Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) has already made the decision to suspend competition for its 2020 fall term, as a precaution due to COVID-19.

For Red Deer College, this means that their fall sports will be delayed until January of 2021.

The decision aligns with other college conferences and governing bodies across the country including the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA), who already cancelled four 2020 Fall National Championships, which means RDC soccer and cross country running seasons will be moved from September to the spring.

RDC President Dr. Peter Nunoda says those student-athletes who have scholarships won't lose any money, as long as they maintain their student requirements.

“All of the internal scholarships that we have for our athletes, we have already reached out to the athletes and said those are still in place. They are first and foremost our students. They are athletes and I appreciate that part of it, but in my mind, the ACAC cancellation of the fall season doesn’t impact their status as our students.”

Dr. Nunoda says they have already made tentative plans for athletes to return to training in the fall, but all of their plans are dependent on the current public health guidelines.

“There is a plan for return to training for our athletes. Now, what that looks like and what the scale is, is really dependent on a couple of factors, and the most important is what the Chief Medical Officer is telling us in terms of the ability to gather and to train. What I can tell you right now, is there will be no contact sports, like soccer, volleyball, basketball, hockey, played in the fall, whether in competitive formats or exhibition games because we just can’t do it, we don’t have clearance to do that.”

RDC plans to host the ACAC Women's Volleyball Championship at the end of February, and then host their ACAC Championship at the beginning of March.

For more information on this announcement and all things RDC Athletics, you can head to rdcathletics.ca.