Last Thursday (March 12) the NCAA announced the cancellations of winter and spring sports seasons, due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Coaches around the country had to inform their teams that their season was cut short, and not because of being eliminated from a postseason tournament, but something out of their control completely.

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"We had a call with [U-M Director of Athletics] Warde [Manuel] in the morning, and I got called out of practice at 2:30 for a three o’clock phone call, and I was almost certain what it was going to be about," U-M softball head coach Carol Hutchins said on the Inside Michigan Basketball radio show Monday. "I was semi-prepared for what was going to happen, but when I had to go back out to tell my team, there’s no preparing for that.

"I called them into the dugout which is our place; it’s our space. I presented the bad news, and the emotions were … everybody handles emotions differently, but it was definitely a sad scene ... It’s the saddest day of my coaching career."

There have been discussions about relieving a year of eligibility for spring sport athletes, such as softball players.

“Council leadership agreed that eligibility relief is appropriate for all Division I student-athletes who participated in spring sports,” the NCAA’s Division I coordination committee said in a statement last Friday. “Details of eligibility relief will be finalized at a later time. Additional issues with NCAA rules must be addressed, and appropriate governance bodies will work through those in the coming days and weeks.”

Hutchins is still in wait-and-see mode, pointing out that there's a lot of implications to a potential ruling like this one.

"We don’t know how the extra eligibility is going to pan out," Hutchins said. "There’s a lot of moving parts to that, with what are the scholarship limits with respect to people that have signed with us? I don’t feel as comforted as some, because we don’t know how this could play out. I understand their intent; I would like them to hammer out the details before they get people’s hopes up or give kids another thing to worry about.

"All I know is the NCAA’s job is to take care of the student athlete, as is Michigan’s. We need to know how this affects a lot of bigger pictures. At this point, no decisions. You can’t make decisions in an environment that is as fluid as it has been, because I have never seen anything move … By the time we make one policy, we’ve already changed it to make another one. We’ve all gotta do the one thing that none of us are very good at — sit back, let things play out, understand that we don’t control this but we have to abide by the rules that come down."

Before the season was cut short, Hutchins' team had gotten out to a 15-8 record in non-conference play, and was ranked No. 18 in the country.

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