Sports at Bucks will take place this fall, with precautions in place.
Varsity and Club Sports will be offered at the Newtown Campus on the athletic fields and gymnasium. Intramural competitions will be offered at each campus.
Team meetings could be held on Zoom in addition to in-person, according to Matt Cipriano, Director of Student Life and Athletic Programs at the College.
Cipriano said that games will be recorded for “fans who are unable [to] or uncomfortable visiting campus for a game.” Student and guest spectators are encouraged to attend games.
As far as masks and other Covid protocols are concerned, Cipriano said that fall sports will follow College and CDC guidelines.
“We [will] work with our custodial department, and we have cleaning and mitigation plans per sport,” Cipriano stated in an interview. He noted that there are “specific travel and social distancing recommendations per sport.”
Cirpiano stated that the Covid situation is “still very fluid, but [Bucks] can easily reinstate 2020-2021 protocols if state and federal agencies announce updated requirements/mandates.”
At the time of the interview, masks were not required for athletic participation, but Cipriano confirmed later by email that this policy was updated as the College reviewed its overall Covid guidelines.
Mask-wearing is currently mandatory at Bucks, as per an email sent on August 6 by the College, as Bucks County has been “deemed an area of substantial spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant.” The email stated that all “visitors, employees, and students” must be wearing masks to enter campus.
Covid vaccinations are not required to be on campus or attend class, according to the email.
Although Covid vaccinations are also not currently mandatory for student athletes, Cipriano strongly reccomends that athletes are vaccinated “in order to ensure that [they] will be able to compete per the requirements of competition.”
When asked if there would be any quarantining procedures among athletic team members, he noted that “students will not be asked to quarantine in order to participate in a sport (no bubble) but may need to quarantine if [their] COVID [test is] positive.”
He said that if a student is symptomatic or tests positive for Covid, precautions will be taken. The student who tested positive will be required to quarantine for 14 days, or follow what is required by their PCP. The student athlete will not be allowed to participate in in-person practices or competitions during this time.
He noted that “those student athletes who have not been vaccinated [if a teammate tests positive] will halt all athletic activities and will need to get cleared through a medical professional, such as a PCP.”
Those students will need to have a “negative COVID test result shared with the medical record designee in order to be considered [to] return to team activities.”
Cipriano said that after a student tests positive, the team members who are vaccinated “will be asked to show their vaccination card to our medical record designee to be cleared to practice and compete.”