Santa Ana College opting out of spring one season, affecting football and other sports

Santa Ana College officials announced Tuesday that the athletic program is opting out of spring one sports, cancelling the seasons for football, women’s volleyball, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s wrestling and men’s and women’s basketball.

Santa Ana College will join the vast majority of colleges in the area in opting out of the spring one season, officials said in a release. The announcement reverses an earlier decision which came before the first deadline on Dec. 18, 2020. Officials at Irvine Valley and Saddleback College announced in December they would opt out of the spring one season.

The announcement comes as community college and high school programs throughout the state deal with the affects of the coronavirus, which haulted sports last March. Orange County and Southern California continues to remain in the most restrictive purple tier.

All spring I sports teams (except football) will be allowed to compete in two scrimmages at some point before the end of June 2021, officials said. The football team will be allowed three intrasquad scrimmages (no outside opponents) during that same period.

College officials said Santa Ana College has currently opted in for the spring two season which is scheduled to begin in April.

“We are optimistic that those sports will successfully compete in the 2021 season after being cancelled in 2020 due to Covid,” said Athletic Director Mary Hegarty in a statement.

“In spring 2020, the CCCAA working group adopted two main principles to determine how athletics should proceed through the pandemic: safety and opportunity. The decision to opt out of spring I now is consistent with those principles. This pause allows our spring I student athletes, staff, faculty and their families to remain as safe as possible while providing the opportunity for our student athletes to compete later in the spring when conditions are expected to improve.”

“We thank President Flores for her continued support of SAC Athletics and know this is the responsible decision – not only for SAC Athletics, but the Santa Ana community, which has been one of the hardest hit by the pandemic. We will work together to get through these challenging times and continue to keep our students, faculty and staff as safe as possible until we are able to return to some sense of normalcy.”

Hegarty said earlier that baseball, softball, beach volleyball and track and field teams would begin official practice on March 27 and start competition on April 10.