On Wednesday the Ivy League – a group of universities in North eastern America including Harvard and Yale – became the first Division I conference to say it will not hold sports this upcoming semester due to the coronavirus pandemic.

While competition in all sports has been ruled out, practice will still be permitted if carried out according to strict guidleines. 

No decision has been made about winter or spring Ivy sports or whether fall sports could be played in the spring of 2021.

“The campus policies make it impractical for competition to occur, at least through the end of the fall semester,” executive director Robin Harris told ESPN. “That’s why today we’re announcing. Eight campuses have announced their policies for the fall over the past two weeks. When we realized and the presidents realized based on these campus policies that we couldn’t have competition, we wanted to make sure the student-athletes were aware of the outcome. It’s certainly the right decision for the Ivy League, but it’s difficult.”

On March 10th the Ivy League was the first Division I conference in America to announce the cancellation of competition for spring 2020. The question now is whether, like in March, the Ivy Leagues decision to cancel competition this autumn will trigger a wave of cancellations by conferences across America. 

Several other individual schools have already announced the cancellation of all fall sports. 

For more information, see ivyleague.com