Pasadena City College announced that most sports matches for the spring semester would be postponed or cancelled until further notice because of the rising cases due to omicron, a variant of COVID-19.
According to the PCC Athletics twitter page, the PCC men’s and women’s basketball teams are scheduled to play their first league game Wednesday, January 19 versus Mt. San Antonio College. All other sports matches have yet to be determined. Fans are allowed to attend the game, but the game is located in Walnut at the Hilmer Lodge Stadium. Attendees must wear masks.
Questions about the status of PCC and future of the athletic department have been addressed by the Dean of Kinesiology, Dyan Miller.
“PCC will make every effort to reschedule games as directed in collaboration with our colleagues who also have been affected in support of our students and those of our opponents,” said Miller. “Our basketball teams will resume play next week and we are testing, practicing and masking whenever possible to keep everyone safe.”
Lupe Vazquez, PCCs leading scorer on the women’s basketball at 28.5 points per game, understands why the games were postponed. However, she is still uncomfortable with the change.
“I don’t like the changes due to Covid,” Vazquez said. “But I do understand that they are out there to keep us healthy and safe. I think they have handled it very well. They are doing what they think is best to keep us healthy and finish our season strong.”
PCC canceled the entire sports season in March of 2020 along with other collegiate and professional sports programs. They restarted sports after missing an entire year in the fall of 2021, picking up South Coast Championships in football and women’s volleyball. But when the omicron cases started to grow, they decided to postpone the early part of the 2022 sports season. Some community colleges have continued to move forward despite the new variant. One school in particular is Mt. San Antonio College, a direct rival in the South Coast Conference. These cancellations and postponements have also affected student-athletes’ enrollment at PCC. Former PCC point guard, Rasheet Wilson transferred out of PCC because they canceled the basketball season. And according to the PCC web site, enrollment in fall of 2021-2022 was 60,405, down from 2020-2021 at 74,101 students.
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