Pronghorns eyeing a return to action this fall

By Dale Woodard on May 7, 2021.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDsports@lethbridgeherald.com

It’s a very welcome green light for the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns athletics.

Following their virtual Canada West AGM Tuesday and Wednesday, Canada West institutions announced their intent to return to conference play for the 2021-22 season in an alternative format after losing the entire 2020-21 season to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The alternative formats, with a greater focus on regional play where possible, provides the conference a viable option to move forward in planning a full Canada West season in the fall.

Altered schedules or not, Pronghorns athletic director Neil Langevin welcomed the chance to merely discuss returning to action in the fall.

“We can’t overstate how optimistic and happy we are, that we’re actually planning to play games,” he said.

“Even just the thought of getting to see teams compete, (for example) in basketball at the gym, just gives you goose bumps. Our players have had a year-and-a-half just like everybody else. Sports is a good outlet for the community and we’re looking forward to getting back there and getting back to competing, which is much fun for our athletes.”

Alternative formats for the next season were adopted for field hockey, football, soccer, hockey, basketball and volleyball. The formats for championship sports and rugby 15s remain as currently scheduled.

The change to the formats will only be in affect for the upcoming season, after which formats will return to their previous models.

Langevin noted the cooperation among the 17 Canada West member schools in hashing out a schedule with minimal opposition along the way.

“There was a Canada West COVID task force that did considerable work on laying the groundwork and great work by the Canada West administrators and staff to make sure the process was collegial and we kept going forward,” he said.

“It was unanimous with almost everything we went through. There were a couple things that weren’t fully unanimous, which were simple things like playoffs formats. That was about the only thing that was really not unanimous.”

In fall sports, men’s football will consist of six teams and a regular season of six games per team, one game versus each team and one additional game.

Men’s soccer will feature 13 teams with a regular season of 10 or 12 games per team in two divisions, the Pacific Division (seven teams, two games versus six teams) and the Prairie Division (six teams, two games versus five teams).

Women’s soccer will consist of 16 teams of three divisions and 12 games per team.

The B.C. Division will include seven teams with two games versus six teams. The Alberta Division will have five teams playing three games against four teams, while the Saskatchewan/Manitoba Division will have four teams playing four games against the other three teams.

Women’s rugby will feature five teams with five or six games per team, two against in-province teams and one versus out of province teams, while women’s field hockey will have three teams with eight games per team (two double round-robin tournaments)

In fall and winter sports, men’s and women’s hockey will ice a regular season of nine teams each and 20 games per team (two games vs. each team and four additional games based on geography).

Men’s and women’s basketball will host 17 teams with 16 or 18 games per team in three divisions, B.C. Division (seven teams, three games versus six teams), Alberta Division (five teams, four games versus four teams) and a Saskatchewan/Manitoba Division (five teams, four games versus four teams).

There will be 13 men’s and 14 women’s volleyball teams with 16 or 18 games per team in three divisions, five teams in the B.C. Division and four in the Alberta Division for the men’s and women’s.

The Saskatchewan/Manitoba division will have four men’s teams and five women’s teams. The divisions of five will play each other four times and the divisions of four will play each other six times.

All Canada West championship sports are planned to proceed during the 2021-22 season, with championships planned in: cross country, curling, golf, swimming, track and field and wrestling.

Langevin said the greater focus on regional play were hallmarks in the discussions between the Canada West institutions for the past year.

“Trying to deal with four different provincial health regulations makes it a bit more difficult. As well, we anticipated travel restrictions, potentially. The other reality is many of the schools had financial issues related to COVID.”

It’s been a little over a year since the Pronghorns men’s and women’s hockey programs were cut due to budget constraints.

As well, the university was subject to further budget cuts earlier this year.

But Langevin was confident was on steady footing to move forward with athletics plans for the fall.

“I would suggest the University of Lethbridge has done a lot of the hard work already. There weren’t a lot of popular decisions made in the past. But for the first time about six years we’re feeling financially stable.”

In the meantime, Langevin said the university will continue to follow current guidelines and monitor their athletes throughout the summer.

“Training protocols will change quite a bit in that we’ll have way more follow up than we usually would for a regular year,” he said.

“We’re going to delay our start when we come back and that matches the universities mission of having students mainly on campus in the fall, but we will start a little bit later. That’s another reason why the local or reduced schedules were really important, to get our student-athletes back in a little bit later and healthy.”

Langevin said the past year of uncertainty has been the equivalent of a yo-yo for the student-athletes and Pronghorns staff.

“They want to at least train and we’ve had that pulled out from under us a number of times. With mental health, we try and work with them.

They were resilient and we’re really proud of the student-athletes who really followed the guidelines throughout the year. We were impacted a little with COVID cases, but really minimally and we didn’t have any transmission within anybody in athletics. So that was really a positive thing. But a couple years of yo-yo (affect) and not having competition and being online schooled and financial issues, you can imagine it’s compounded for student athletes who really love to compete.”

Understandably, Langevin said he had received many messages since the announcement came down Wednesday.

“It’s that sense of optimism that we can actually move forward. They start to see there’s promise of them getting back in the gym or on the field, the court or the track.”

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