After a successful two-day vaccination program for its student-athletes, the country’s oldest collegiate league, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) plans to open Season 97 as early as February 2022 with the possibility of face-to-face competitions in basketball and volleyball.
Following Season 96 of the NCAA where only two sports–chess and taekwondo–were played and televised on GMA Network, the league’s current broadcast partner, Season 97’s host, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB), is looking forward to holding athletic tournaments physically in February next year.
During a press conference, Chairperson of the NCAA 97 Management Committee (MANCOM) and DLS-CSB’s Dax Castellano announced that the calendar of activities for Season 97 is already in the works, with the Management Committee agreeing to hold face-to-face competitions, however, remaining under the approval of the league’s Policy Board. The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) advised the league’s officials to inform the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) regarding their plans and target dates for the games as early as possible.
“We agreed to do it with basketball and volleyball and some online events. We'll do face-to-face basketball and volleyball," Castellano said
CHED’s two-day vaccination drive for NCAA student-athletes prompted the possibility of conducting physical head-to-head games. According to outgoing MANCOM chairperson Rev Fr. Vic Calvo of Letran, over 100 student-athletes from different NCAA participating schools received COVID-19 jabs last Oct. 28 to 29, 2021 at Jose Rizal University.
The in-person matches are expected to be staged outside of Metro Manila with Laguna, Pampanga, and Subic cited as the league’s potential venues. In the case that the situation in Metro Manila recuperates, a bubble-to-bubble setup might be possible wherein secluded premises for involved teams and game venues will take place within the respective participating schools, barring the fear of having constrained schedules due to unexpected rise of cases.
According to the commission’s executive director Atty. Cinderella Filipina Benitez-Jaro, the guidelines for conducting face-to-face training for student-athletes are still being revised by the NCAA and the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP), and to be finalized by CHED despite receiving an approval from the IATF.
“There are additional considerations or provisions that we have to integrate to the other guidelines. Now that the supply of vaccines is consistent, we’ll incorporate the guidelines for the vaccinated athletes and unvaccinated athletes,” Jaro said.
