Swine flu prompts University of Delaware to forfeit softball championship

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The University of Delaware canceled its softball team’s three-game series against Hofstra after 12 students, including one baseball player, were diagnosed with the swine flu. Hofstra inevitably took the regular season championship in the Colonial Athletic Assn.

‘You always have concern over things that you have no control over,’ Hofstra Coach Bill Edwards told Newsday. ‘I don’t know that we are aware countrywide about how serious and how big this is, when there is still an unknown factor there is always concerns. It is what it is, we certainly have to follow university and national protocol because it is going to be well out of our hands as to what transpires here.’

This isn’t the first canceled or postponed athletic event since the swine flu outbreak. Totally Random in the sports section today noted that high school sporting events in Texas were postponed. Play is scheduled to resume May 11. Alabama also canceled sporting events.

The Times’ Eric Sondheimer reports on Varsity Times Insider that City Section Commissioner Barbara Fiege informed athletic directors at a meeting Wednesday that playoff schedules next month could be disrupted if schools are closed.

-- Mark Medina