West Virginia football spring game canceled, teaching opportunities arise

West Virginia will not have a spring game this year.

At least not on the original April 18 date after the Big 12 announced that due to the ongoing developments related to COVID-19 the suspension of all activities has been suspended until May 31.

That suspension includes all team or individual practices, meetings or gatherings.

That May 31 date is a two-month extension over the original March 29 date but is expected to be re-evaluated regularly and could be adjusted as circumstances dictate.

That date is significant in the sense that is around the time that players would report back to campus and the focus would start to shift toward preparing for the start of the 2020 season. Obviously, things can change as mentioned above but for now, uncertainty remains.

“It’s disappointing for our players and fans that the Gold-Blue Spring Game is canceled. The game is the highlight of the spring for everyone,” head coach Neal Brown said.

Still it goes without saying that West Virginia really didn’t have a choice in the matter in the best interest of everybody involved with the spread of the pandemic.

““These are very serious times, and this is the right decision. We need to do everything we can to protect our student-athletes, University, state and community,” Brown said.

It remains to be seen what, if anything, can be done to recoup those lost practices when that time comes but there are several suggestions. That is a bridge that will be crossed later.

For now, sports essentially continue to be halted across college campuses with one exception.

One adjustment to the measure was the fact that the Big 12 has how provided some availability to conduct virtual sessions with student athletes. Those sessions will include film study, technical discussions, tactical sessions and other non-physical activities that take place virtually.

Those activities are limited to two hours per week in all sports but is a major shift from what was previously in place preventing all football activities and limiting coaches to basically only contact centered around the health and well-being of the players.

That will certainly continue but opening the door for virtual sessions is something that West Virginia had prepared for leading up to this announcement.

Brown and his staff had been previously practicing methods on how to best handle remote position meetings without the players involved ahead of that March 29 cutoff.

It was a little bit of old-fashioned trial and error to see what the most effective ways were to have participation and how to quiz players to see if they were retaining that knowledge so that once things were set in regards to virtual sessions they could hit the ground running.

“Soon as that goes down, boom. We have a plan, we’re ready to roll,” Brown said.

The two hours per week isn’t going to be a ton of time, but still significant that coaches can work with their players on the game of football to start preparing for whatever could be next.

It remains to be seen when things will return to normal but for now monitoring and adjusting are all that can be done to combat the issues caused by the coronavirus.

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