We are writing to share the news with you that we have made the decision to opt-out of Phase 1 Sports for Yuba College. This means there will be no 2020-2021 season for our football, basketball, soccer, and volleyball teams.  At our November Board of Trustees’ meeting, we presented the many challenges to moving forward with competition. We continued to push to overcome them, but as conditions worsened, we received guidance from our County Public Health Officers that made it clear we would be unable to compete in January. Playing contact sports during a peak in our COVID cases would have gone against our focus on the safety of our students, faculty, and staff. It would have also ignored the challenges being expressed by our local medical community as they deal with the surge.

As we approach the December 18 deadline to opt-in or opt-out of Phase 1, we are seeing an increase in schools opting out of this phase of sports as well.

Last week we met with the coaches and then the athletes to share this information with them and allow them time to ask questions and process the decision. Our hope is that we can now focus on creating a plan to engage with and support the student-athletes impacted by this decision in the coming semester. The CCCAA has already provided for added eligibility for athletes and now our work is to focus on recruiting and retaining athletes now and into the 2021-2022 Seasons.

This decision was difficult. We want to make clear that we remain supportive of athletics at Yuba College and look forward to seeing them return to the court/fields/track when safe to do so.