GAINESVILLE, Fla. — With the weekend approaching Friday afternoon,
Kevin O'Sullivan was like just about everybody else. In a perfect world — which this definitely is not, right now — O'Sullivan and his Florida baseball team, ranked No. 1 in the nation when college sports shut down last month, would have been stretching and warming up for the first game of a weekend series at Arkansas.
Instead, he was at home trying to come up with something to preoccupy his time.
"I'm still trying to figure it all out, especially now with this home-schooling thing," said O'Sullivan, the father to a 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son. "Each day is a new challenge and a learning situation for everybody. I'm not one to sit around all day. I'm not a big Netflix guy. I'm trying to be open-minded, but so far it's a lot of golf cart rides with my son."
That's not just the state of Florida baseball, right now. And it's basically the same with Florida softball, tennis, golf, track and field and lacrosse, which make up UF's half-dozen spring sports. The coaches are trying to "figure it all out," but there's so much to be determined yet.
It's been one week since the NCAA Division I Council announced it had voted to grant an extra year of eligibility to student-athletes in spring sports in the wake of their seasons being canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The ruling not only granted an extra year for seniors impacted by what would have been a career-ending situation, but all student-athletes on spring sports teams, meaning rosters will be expanded to allow for scholarship limits to be exceeded to keep those senior players on board.
"This ruling is really going to help soften the blow a bit for those seniors who were enjoying their final year of competition," Gators women's tennis coach
Roland Thornqvist said.
CHARTING THE GATORS
Here's a breakdown of UF's nine spring sports impacted by the NCAA rule change to grant roster waivers for student-athletes, plus a breakdown of how many scholarships each sport is allowed and how many seniors are on each team, with walk-ons included.
| Sport |
Scholarships |
Seniors |
| Baseball |
11.7 |
4 |
| Golf (men) |
4.5 |
1 |
| Golf (women) |
6.0 |
2 |
| Lacrosse |
12.0 |
5 |
| Softball |
12.0 |
6 |
| Tennis (men) |
4.5 |
1 |
| Tennis (women) |
8.0 |
1 |
| Track & Field (men) |
12.6 |
9 |
| Track & Field (women) |
18.0 |
8 |
No question, but in the week since the March 30 vote, the fallout from the development hasn't begun to manifest itself, what with the country (and the world) still virtually paralyzed by an economic shutdown, stay-at-home orders and social-distancing guidelines. That UF's spring coaches are far from determining just to disperse their scholarships for the 2021 seasons — when the 2020-21 athletic calendar faces such uncertainty — is hardly a surprise.
Tim Walton
"This will not be seamless. There are going to be a lot of moving parts to this," Gators softball coach
Tim Walton said. "It doesn't just impact the five classes. This is a game-changer."
All coaches enter recruiting cycles with a strategy. The goal, of course, is to build a roster for success in the upcoming season, but always with a plan that looks down the road. Pitches are often made to recruits based on how the roster will look when those future players are set to arrive.
Now, some of those timelines are out the window.
"There's going to a lot of different scenarios that both coaches and student-athletes are going to face that you just can't predict at this point," UF women's golf coach
Emily Bastel Glaser said.
Like the one facing, say, Gators standout shortstop Sophia Reynoso, a fifth-year senior and stalwart in the program who has started all 229 games of her career. Reynoso, who graduates this semester, already has a graduate-coach position lined up in her home state of California.
"Do you move on with your life or take one more opportunity at the thing you love?" Walton said. "Some kids are going to have to make those kinds of decisions."
When Major League Baseball announced its draft would be slashed from 40 rounds to just five that certainly got the attention of a handful of current and future Gators.
"There's just a lot of uncertainty," O'Sullivan said. "What does that mean for roster management? I don't know."
Most spring sports fall under the "equivalency" category, meaning scholarships are partial. Women's golf, for example, gets six scholarships, which in 2020 it spread across nine players. How the money is allocated annually is left to the coach. The same will hold true with the expanded rosters of future seasons, but the financial flexibility with regard to partial scholarships will be afforded only to the players whose eligibility will have been exhausted in 2020.
Whether those players get their same scholarship amount in 2021 also will be up to the coach.
At Florida, the number of 2020 student-athletes receiving scholarship aid impacted is 28, with the financial scholarship commitment an estimated $600,000 to $650,000. That figure does not include academic support, sports medicine, health, travel, equipment and nutrition.
On Friday, the Southeastern Conference announced that all in-person athletic activities, including team and individual practices and meetings would be suspended through at least May 31, based on public health advisories related to the coronavirus. Officials are still dealing with the current athletic calendar.
As much as everyone would love to look to the 2020-21 athletic calendar, it's still only April.
Emily Bastel Glaser
Early April, at that.
"Of course, you want all your players to have the opportunity [to return], but you also know it's going to create some difficult conversations," Glaser said. "Obviously, I've never experienced anything like this — none of us have — so I'm just trying to do the best I can to work within the parameters we've been given. I would love to hear how my colleagues are dealing with this."
Call 'em up, Coach. Chances are good they'll have some time to chat. Lots of time.
"Normally, when your season ends it's like a freight train going full speed that comes to a screeching halt, then it's 'Go, go, go,' right into the offseason, recruiting camps, summer all that. But there's been no conclusion to this season — no ending — and now your day-to-day work has been taken away," O'Sullivan said. "You watch FOX or CNN day in, day out and everything is changing by the hour. The governors' guidelines, the travel ban, the masks, everything just keeps changing. Hopefully, we get to a point when people see the light at the end of the tunnel."
Until then, they wait.
