Spring sport athletes granted another year. WSU coaches tackle ‘ancillary consequences’
All spring sports athletes at Wichita State received good news Monday when the NCAA’s Division I Council approved a blanket waiver to extend eligibility for all spring student-athletes who saw their seasons prematurely ended by the coronavirus pandemic.
That means the 32 seniors playing spring sports at WSU will have the opportunity to finish out their careers next spring. It also means all other athletes will have the opportunity to play a full four years in their careers.
Madison Perrigan will be able to complete her pursuit of the softball program’s home run record, the All-American men’s tennis doubles team of Murkel Dellien and Marius Frosa will get their final shot at nationals and the reigning conference MVP, Rebekah Topham, will have one last go-around on the track.
“I think it was absolutely the right decision,” WSU athletic director Darron Boatright said. “Now we have some work to do to figure out how to implement it, but it was the right thing to do for the students and their experience as a college athlete.
“There’s no doubt that this is going to take some maneuvering and there are going to be some ancillary consequences, but that’s to be expected and those consequences are worth it. These students didn’t do anything to lose their year. When you do the right thing, then it will work out.”
The details in the vote include that the seniors who decide to return will not count against the program’s scholarship limits for the 2021 season.
That won’t affect the WSU baseball team much even if all five seniors decide to return because the Shockers were six players under the 35-man limit already. Teams will now be allowed to exceed that limit as long as the overage includes only seniors, meaning WSU coach Eric Wedge could potentially sign up to 11 players this offseason even if every player returns for next season.
WSU’s five seniors were weekend starter Preston Snavely, infielder Alex Jackson, left fielder Jacob Katzfey, midweek starter Tommy Barnhouse and backup catcher Chris Diehl.
“We’re going to have some roster flexibility, but it’s going to come down to how aggressive we want to be,” Wedge said. “That depends some on what these seniors decide to do. I don’t want to be shortsighted and think only about next year. We have to think about the next four years.”
The problem Wedge foresees is the logjam on rosters now that there will essentially be a double freshmen class next season with the 2020 freshmen remaining freshmen and the 2021 recruits joining them. WSU’s roster currently has nine freshmen.
The NCAA Division I Council acknowledged Tuesday that further discussions about the roster management situation will be required.
“I just think there is going to be a huge traffic jam now,” Wedge said. “Whatever they end up deciding to do, we’ll adjust and do what we can do with it and go from there.
“I’m just really pleased those seniors are going to have the option to come back and we’ll work through the process and take it case-by-case and decide what’s best for them and what’s best for the program.”
One program that’s facing that kind of traffic jam is the WSU softball team. All three of the team’s seniors — catcher Madison Perrigan, ace Bailey Lange and infielder Ryleigh Buck — are crucial pieces to the team, and all three are on board with returning next spring. But WSU also signed eight freshmen in the fall under the assumption that those three players would be graduating.
As it stands, the softball team will now have a 14-player freshman class next season.
“We’re just going to have a lot more options now and we’re going to have to sit down at the end of the day and look at what’s best going forward for the program and what’s best going forward for each individual student-athlete,” Bredbenner said. “I’m not one who wants to waste a year of eligibility on someone who is going to have to play behind a senior that comes back now. So there will have to be some conversations about redshirting, some conversations about maybe playing a different position. We’ll try to do what’s best for each individual player.”
Bredbenner said she expects to have 19 players returning and with the eight incoming recruits, WSU’s roster would swell to 27 players — seven over the limit of 20 players that teams are allowed to travel with.
For a program with a limited budget, Bredbenner is also curious on how teams across the country will pay for the expanded rosters. Not only the scholarship money, but also the expenditures for rostering more players throughout a season.
“You start thinking about it and now I’m have 27 kids that I need to get uniforms, gloves and equipment for,” Bredbenner said. “We were preparing for 24 at most and now we’re up to 27. If they don’t put any restrictions on travel numbers, then that’s four more hotel rooms, seven more plane tickets, seven more mouths to feed on road trips. And then you start thinking about your staff, how much longer it’s going to take to throw batting practice.”
Boatright said that the decision will no doubt put a financial strain on WSU and universities across the country, but he had confidence the situation will work out. In its statement released Monday, the NCAA said the schools may draw from the Student Assistance Fund to pay for scholarships for seniors who are returning next spring.
Boatright said while WSU might be able to draw some money from that fund, he expects all universities will have to foot “a large majority of the bill.”
“We already had some concerns from a financial perspective across the board,” Boatright said. “Attendance has been down and season tickets across the board have been down. And that’s not just a Wichita State problem, that’s a universal problem across all of college athletics and professional sports.
“So we were already preparing and trying to figure out what to do from a revenue standpoint. This will put a little bit of a strain on that, but we’ll be prepared and we’ll find a way.”
It was also announced that schools are given the flexibility to hand out whatever athletic aid they want to the returning seniors, meaning they are not required to match the same money they awarded for the 2019-20 school year.
That could lead to some difficult conversations with some seniors, as programs might have to slash what they can offer certain athletes since they had been recruiting under the assumption that they would be leaving the program this spring.
Another dilemma for seniors who are graduating this May is remaining academically eligible. They will either now have to declare another major or enroll in graduate school. A combination of these two things could lead some seniors to leaving WSU to pursue a professional career.
While the majority of WSU spring coaches told The Eagle that their seniors plan to return next spring, WSU track and field coach Steve Rainbolt said he had one example that is likely going to have to leave in senior Mason Buckmaster, a seven-foot high jumper and reigning conference champion.
“Mason was jumping better than ever before and he was looking to have a huge spring season for us,” Rainbolt said. “But he’s got a very nice job as an engineer already lined up in Fort Worth that he starts in July. So he’s not going to be able to compete anymore, at least not for Wichita State.”
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