CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (CLARKSVILLENOW) – In recent weeks, the NCAA has chosen to grant another year of eligibility to spring sport athletes. Austin Peay athletic director Gerald Harrison addressed the media Wednesday and said that there are still many decisions to be made by the NCAA before the university can potentially follow suit.

“There is going to be some challenges that the NCAA is going to have to give us guidance on,” Harrison said. “The report that came out last week was from a committee recommending grants and an additional year of eligibility for student athletes who lost their season. That’s just step one of several before we actually get into knowing what the parameters we’ll be given.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations within our conference and people with the NCAA office and it’s going to be interesting because we don’t know what we have to be honest. They haven’t decided yet if it’s just going to be the seniors or everyone that plays. Until we have some concrete answers, I don’t want to speculate on how it’s going to happen. There’s also the financial aspect that makes me a little antsy. Exactly how much is it going to cost to award all of the spring sports student athletes aid for an additional year and also bring in the freshmen who have already signed?”

Harrison also discussed how the current situation has impacted recruiting in its early stages and how he sees it continuing to do so.

“This is a major recruiting time for other sports,” Harrison said. “There is no AAU games and they’re not out on the road, so this is a crucial evaluation period in basketball. In football, they would be in spring recruiting starting in April, so they’re not going to be able to do that. It does change your ability to see student athletes in person, so recruiting is basically being done by phone. It does pose a challenge and I do think there will be an adjustment to the recruiting calendar before long.”

In his time spent previously as a coach and as a player, Austin Peay baseball coach Travis Janssen can only recall one similar instance in which a stoppage like this has occurred.

“The only thing that’s even close for me is when 9/11 happened,” Janssen said. “I was a young assistant coach down in Louisiana and can remember it crystal clear that things stood still for it felt like roughly a week. That was the only time where you really pressed reset and the only time that is remotely close to this for me.”

Sophomore outfielder Garrett Spain spoke on how some of the upperclassmen and seniors such as Malcolm Tipler and others reacted to the news initially and how they are coping since they’ve had more time to process the OVC’s decision to cancel the season.

“Obviously when we were told it was delayed, we had some idea that they were going to cancel the rest of the season,” Spain said. “Like Coach Janssen said, we weren’t really in shock when we first heard the news and knew something to the extent of what was coming. Two weeks from then, you start seeing the upperclassmen reach out and say how much they miss playing and miss being with everybody. They’re wishing that they could be back and maybe not taking what they did for granted and enjoying what we had a little bit more. It’s a tough place to be in, but they’re an awesome group of guys and continue to reach out.”

Before their 2020 campaign was cut short, Austin Peay softball had won six of its last eight contests.

APSU softball coach Kassie Stanfill did agree that the season being brought to an abrupt halt likely did make it more difficult on the players, knowing that the team seemed to be headed in the right direction.

“Probably so,” Stanfill answered. “I personally felt like we were starting to gel. I think at the beginning of the year we were still trying to figure out who Team 35 was. By the last week or so, you could tell that we were truly grooving. You could tell by the excitement and energy. Yes, when that is taken away then it probably does hurt a little bit more because our verbiage daily was we were going to win an OVC championship. It does make it a little more challenging, but again it is what it is.”

Senior utility player Emily Moore shared what her current plans are and what her decision would be if ultimately given another year of eligibility.

“As of now, everything is still kind of up in the air like we’ve talked about,” Moore said. “I have been applying for internships and jobs for the summer and for the fall, thinking that I was going to graduate in May. If I were to get another year of eligibility, my decision right now would be to take it and get my Master’s and use that other year to play and just really finish out my career how I wanted to with my team.”

Austin Peay track and field coach Valerie Brown relayed what her message to the team was after finding out the cancellation of the season and what she told her athletes about handling everything going on surrounding COVID-19.

“All year we talked about change, adversity and how to respond as a team,” Brown said. “This is a good group and they have responded really well throughout the year when dealing with things that are out of our control. We talk about athletics being a doorway and we’re preparing these young ladies for life right now. We’re just trying to keep them focused academically and take it day by day.”

Junior athlete Lennex Walker shared how she’s chosen to occupy her free time during the layoff.

“At first I went home to Chattanooga to be with my family,” Walker said. “Right now, I’m back in Clarksville. I think that this time is good to help us figure out what we like to do outside of our sport. For me, this has been useful because track has been my life and taken up the majority of my schedule every day. I’ve been doing a lot of organizing and rearranging my room and also started coloring and writing little journal entries to help me kind of process what is going on. I think it makes dealing with this a lot easier.”