Miami's NCAA Champion Perez-Somarriba Will Return for Another Year; McEnroe, Adams Test Positive for COVID-19; ITF Academy Increases Free Offerings on its Educational Platform
Perez-Somarriba, a 21-year-old from Spain, wrote in her own words her reasons for coming back on the Miami website, and it's hard to imagine a more eloquent account of what college tennis means to many of the student-athletes that participate in it.
The NCAA will no doubt be answering many questions about the decision to allow that extra year of eligibility in the weeks and months to come, but below is the key passage from the article published on NCAA.org last night:
The Division I Council on Monday voted to allow schools to provide spring-sport student-athletes an additional season of competition and an extension of their period of eligibility.
Members also adjusted financial aid rules to allow teams to carry more members on scholarship to account for incoming recruits and student-athletes who had been in their last year of eligibility who decide to stay. In a nod to the financial uncertainty faced by higher education, the Council vote also provided schools with the flexibility to give students the opportunity to return for 2020-21 without requiring that athletics aid be provided at the same level awarded for 2019-20. This flexibility applies only to student-athletes who would have exhausted eligibility in 2019-20.
Schools also will have the ability to use the NCAA’s Student Assistance Fund to pay for scholarships for students who take advantage of the additional eligibility flexibility in 2020-21.
Division I rules limit student-athletes to four seasons of competition in a five-year period. The Council’s decision allows schools to self-apply waivers to restore one of those seasons of competition for student-athletes who had competed while eligible in the COVID-19-shortened 2020 spring season
The Council also will allow schools to self-apply a one-year extension of eligibility for spring-sport student-athletes, effectively extending each student’s five-year “clock” by a year. This decision was especially important for student-athletes who had reached the end of their five-year clock in 2020 and saw their seasons end abruptly.
Dan Wolken of USA Today discusses some of the issues that could surface when it comes to funding scholarships for these seniors, but agrees that the NCAA has done the best it could for the student-athletes given this unprecedented situation.
The tennis world is still reporting just one active player with the COVID-19 virus, 20-year-old Thiago Seyboth-Wild of Brazil, but today it learned that two major figures in the sport in the United States have contracted it: ESPN commentator Patrick McEnroe and USTA immediate past president Katrina Adams. McEnroe, who was the General Manager of USTA Player Development from 2008-2016, posted a video explaining his health situation today from the basement of his home in New York. That video can be found in this USA Today article.
Adams divulged her recent bout with the virus in this podcast from Champions of Change. At the beginning of the podcast, Adams goes into detail about her symptoms and her quarantine once she was told she had been in contact with someone who had tested positive.
The good news is that both McEnroe and Adams appear to have recovered without needing hospitalization and are well enough to speak about their illness and recovery.
The ITF has opened up more of its Academy resources for free and is also announcing several new online courses, which are available not only to coaches, but to parents, players and those looking to understand more about the sport.
Registration for the ITF Academy can be found here.
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