Canada West cancels winter sports events due to COVID-19

The final buzzer has sounded on the Canada West season for more sports.

The conference announced Thursday there wouldn’t be regular seasons, playoffs or championship events during the 2020-21 season in men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s hockey, men’s and women’s wrestling, and women’s rugby 7s due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The status of the conference’s curling, track and field and swimming championships is to be decided at a later date.

Canada West cancelled all fall sports on June 8 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The conference says its member schools — including the universities of Regina and Saskatchewan — have been “empowered  to explore competitive opportunities for their student-athletes, based on the principle of regional cohort play.”

A vote of the 17 Canada West members made the cancellations and deferrals official after a recommendation from the board of directors.

“This isn’t the outcome any of us wanted, however, it has become increasingly clear over the last few weeks that the environment wasn’t going to change sufficiently to ensure safe competition in traditional conference formats in these sports,” conference president Clint Hamilton said in a media release. “Ultimately our members saw no feasible path to staging traditional Canada West conference events during the 2020-21 season in these sports.

“With (Thursday’s) decision our members have opted to provide clarity to our stakeholders, most importantly our student-athletes. Collectively we didn’t take the decision to cancel fall competition lightly in June, and today’s announcement is equally disappointing to everyone involved in university sport. Our members will now shift their focus to finding new ways of delivering non-conference sport competition for our student-athletes.”

U Sports, the governing body for national championships, also announced its decision to cancel all remaining 2020-21 national championships.

Canada West hopes to see a full resumption of sports in the fall of 2021.