PA West Soccer Association cancels spring season

Another sports league has been canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

On Wednesday night, the Pennsylvania West State Soccer Association’s Youth Board decided because of different contributing factors surrounding the state-at-home order issued in Pennsylvania, the 2020 spring soccer season has been canceled.

“Our youth board decided to cancel a number of spring activities, including our spring playing session,” PA West Executive Director Tim McCoy said. “This was due to the uncertain nature of Stay At Home and how long it would take after it’s lifted for social distancing to permit play. The availability of fields was also a concern as many of our clubs are reliant on school district fields or municipal fields that are currently closed to activity.

“While we were hopeful that the kids would get to go outside and play and run around and that normalcy would come back, we recognized that giving them an opportunity to know definitively that this is what’s going on with soccer. It at least removed a little bit of the cloud that was there, that it wasn’t up in the air.”

According to its website, the PA West Soccer organization, which has boundaries from the western border of Pennsylvania to the eastern boundaries of Potter, Clinton, Centre, Huntingdon, and Fulton counties, has a current membership of over 130 youth clubs and eight adult leagues. It also has around 40,000 youth players and 2,500 amateur adult players. A complete list of the leagues that were affected by the cancellation can be found on PA West’s website.

The Deer Lakes youth league, which is a member of PA West in District 2, informed its league families Thursday afternoon of the season cancellation via its Facebook page.

Even though the spring season is canceled, McCoy and the rest of the organization has plans for this summer for interested clubs.

“We’re looking at a couple of options,” McCoy said. “I couple of clubs have reached out and said that they are thinking about doing an in-house program where they would have their kids just meet and play. They wouldn’t necessarily be looking to travel to a neighboring club to play. So we’re looking to provide some sort of format, with some guidance for clubs that are interested in that.”

Earlier this month, the PIAA decided to cancel the rest of the winter sports championship. They also decided to cancel the entire spring sports season, leaving seniors in spring sports from around the state without a final high school season.