Columbia Bible College suspends women's basketball team for rest of season
The 2019 season for the Columbia Bible College women’s basketball team unfortunately ended a bit prematurely this year for everyone involved. The team was forced to forfeit the remainder of the season after they determined they couldn’t field a full strength team anymore.
“This is just unfortunate for our women’s program” said Athletic Director Mike Teeter. [. . .] “We were kind of in a period of transition as a number of players who had been part of the program were graduating and moving on, so we kind of already knew that we were in a rebuild.
It didn’t quite work out this season where it kind of forced our hand into having to stop competing for the remainder of the season, and that definitely wasn’t our intention.”
The decision was made just after the start of the new year, when the administration determined they wouldn’t be able to field a team without severely risking the players left with a high chance of injury. At that point players were informed that the team would not be playing the remainder of the schedule, but all of them would be welcome back once the team starts back up again.
“We ended up having a roster being down to five and at that point in time, we had a meeting over the Christmas break and we had to make a decision pretty quickly” explained Teeter. “With no real time to try and figure out recruiting and who we’re bringing in any additional players halfway through the season, we had to basically begin to make this decision to stop the program for the time being when it comes to competing.
As far as players, obviously they were disappointed. We had a team meeting and we were able to communicate the details with them.”
There will be changes at the coaching level as well. Head coach Angela Booy will not be returning to start next season, who is “dialling it back” from her duties of coaching the Bearcats as well as teaching at nearby W.J. Mouat.
“We’ll be definitely be looking locally in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley” said Teeter on where the next head coach will come from. “There’s a range of individuals who might be interested in the role. We’ve had some discussions with some people, but will definitely be someone who has been coaching at the high school level, maybe done some assistant coaching at the collegiate level.”
Another hurdle the team will have to overcome is the PacWest conference. Because they’ve withdrew midway through the season, they will have to resubmit their application for a women’s program before they start playing again.
“I’m getting more familiar with the process” explained Teeter. [. . .] “That could potentially mean doing a bit of an exhibition season vs being entered right back in to league play. We’ll see. At this point PacWest has yet to make a decision.”
But despite all the challenges, Teeter is hopeful that the program can rise once again.
“The plan for us is we do plan on trying to restart our women’s basketball program and have our team compete in the fall of 2019” he said emphatically. [. . .] “We are looking forward to the fact that it can be a bit of a restart for the program again and hopefully have some success moving forward.”
Written by: Nick Bondi