The Golden State Athletic Conference canceled all games and matches between GSAC teams from March 12 to March 25 in an effort to limit the spread of coronavirus Thursday morning.
“…the decisions are part of ongoing actions across the world to prevent the spread of the coronavirus which was just labeled a pandemic yesterday,” GSAC officials said in a press release.
For The Master’s University, these sanctions affect three of its spring sports: baseball, beach volleyball and men’s volleyball. Track and field remains unaffected as regular season conference play has not begun yet.
“The girls are a bit sad because they truly love to compete and we only have a few weeks left in our first season,” said beach volleyball head coach Annett Davis in a text message. “Though we would love to compete, we understand that the health and safety of the masses is more important than the game.”
Luckily for the beach volleyball team, they will only miss two matches, both scheduled to take place on Saturday. Its matches at CSU Bakersfield and Concordia University Irvine were canceled shortly after the press release from the conference.
“We were going to play Concordia Irvine and looking forward to that rematch,” Davis said. “And had an opportunity to play an NCAA D1 school in CSUB. We always want a chance to play competitive non-league teams because it makes us better.”
TMU’s matches against Loyola Marymount and Central Arkansas are still set to take place on March 21 in Santa Monica for the time being.
“We are hoping that next week’s matches will still occur, which means we would have an opportunity to play D1 schools,” Davis said. “If that changes we will have to make the best of it, realizing that all the other teams in our conference are in the same boat.”
The Mustangs are coming off a three-game winning streak and boasts a 5-4 which just recently improved to above .500.
“Honestly, our recent success or winning streak doesn’t have any effect on how they feel about playing,” Davis said. “These girls want to compete all the time, period. They just love the sport so much. Every day in practice they just want to play and compete against each other. They don’t want practice to end.”
The GSAC sanctions have no effect on the beach volleyball team’s practice schedule. They plan to keep practicing as normal and get ready to compete in Santa Monica on March 21.
“My job is to get my team prepared the best I can under the circumstances,” Davis said.” We will continue to train hard and compete daily in practice so that ultimately we can win.”
TMU baseball is also expecting to miss a minimal amount of its season, as well. The Mustangs have rescheduled their two-game series at Arizona Christian University that was originally planned for Friday and Saturday. The new dates have yet to be determined.
They also canceled their four-game home series against San Diego Christian College that featured two double-headers. It was scheduled for March 20 through March 21.
Mustangs baseball will return to the diamond on March 27 in a four-game series against Vanguard University at TMU.
The men’s volleyball team was forced to cancel the majority of the remainder of its season. They will miss four matches over the next two weeks against University of Jamestown, Benedictine University at Mesa, RV OUAZ, and Arizona Christian University.
Mustangs men’s volleyball will return to the court on March 27 in a home game against Hope International University in The MacArthur Center.
