The Duke University women’s basketball program will end its season early, the team announced Friday, due to growing concerns about the coronavirus. It is the first Power Five basketball team to start and stop its season because of the pandemic.
“The student-athlete of the women’s basketball team Duke made the difficult decision to end their current season due to security concerns,” said Michael Schoenfeld, director of communications for the school in Durham, North Carolina, in the announcement.
All other Duke sports should continue as usual, following recommended safety protocols, he added.
The women’s team, which had a 3-1 record, initially suspended operations on Dec. 16 after two members of its travel group tested positive for the virus, requiring contact tracking. Blue Devils, therefore, postponed games against the state of North Carolina and the University of North Carolina Wilmington; the program had already postponed a game against the University of Miami due to contact tracking issues. I was scheduled to play in Louisville next week.
Kara Lawson, Duke’s first-year head coach, said after a game against Louisville this month that she didn’t think the team should play during the pandemic. “That’s my opinion on that,” she said.
Other conferences and sports postponed games or suspended seasons during the pandemic. College football completed the regular season, despite several postponements, cancellations and staff changes. The Ivy League canceled its winter sports and delayed its spring seasons in November. And a New York Times analysis published in early December showed that at least 6,600 college athletes, coaches and others had tested positive for coronavirus.
Duke’s announcement comes at a time when coronavirus cases are on the rise in the United States; in North Carolina, there has been a steady daily average of more than 5,500 new cases per day in the past few weeks, according to a New York Times database.
The 2021 Division I women’s basketball tournament is set to begin in March in a region to limit travel and mitigate the spread of the virus, with the NCAA looking to and around San Antonio. The Division I men’s tournament is also due to be held in a region this spring, with the NCAA announcing in November that it was talking to officials in Indianapolis.
The 2020 men’s and women’s tournaments were among the first major sporting events in the United States to be canceled due to the worsening of the pandemic last March.