BEAUMONT, Texas — In a time when there's been very little good news in the sports world, the NCAA made a huge announcement. All spring athletes will get another year of eligibility.
Lamar baseball coach Will Davis is happy with the ruling.
"Yeah I think the positives are it's beneficial for all of our student athletes, that they don't lose a year. Obviously the seniors not being forced to end their careers, especially I don't know if you guys have seen, the Major League Draft has been shortened to five rounds. So the opportunities to play professional baseball can be really lowered. The only thing we will have to get a little creative on is we did anticipate losing a few juniors to the MLB Draft and it doesn't look like that's probably going to happen at this point. So we're going to have to get a little creative from that standpoint. Maybe back off some of the offers that we've had out there in recruiting. But as far as moving forward, we only have one 2021 high school kid committed so we have plenty of time to adjust our sites accordingly. We anticipated 2021 being a huge class cause we had over twenty juniors this year, but now fortunately for us they'll be 2020 juniors again next year. So it looks like 2022 will be the big class for us. So it gives us a lot of time to go ahead and do that."
With their season cancelled, Davis like many coaches, has had plenty of extra time on his hands.
"Well I've had a lot of dad time so that's been good. You know playing with my daughter Everly and my wife's going to be going into labor any day now, so we're waiting for that to happen. My mother-in-law had to come in from Louisiana before the travel ban was upheld. So we're just trying to do what we can from a work standpoint to stay on top of our guys academically and stay in contact with our recruits. Obviously these piece of news yesterday helps us have a little bit of clarity moving forward on what we can do and it will give us a little something to do as we try to organize the roster moving forward."