Kara Lawson’s 1st season as Duke’s women’s basketball head coach will be ending much sooner than anticipated. Lawson and Duke are planning on opting out of the rest of the season because of COVID-19, multiple sources tell The Ball Out.
After we broke the news early this afternoon, Duke released a statement late evening confirming what we were hearing: they were canceling the rest of the 2020-21 season:
“The student-athletes on the Duke women’s basketball team have made the difficult decision to conclude their current season due to safety concerns,” said Michael Schoenfeld, Vice President for Public Affairs & Government Relations and Chief Communications Officer for Duke University. “We support their decision, as we have supported the choices made by all student-athletes at Duke during this unprecedented time. Duke will maintain our current schedule of competition in other sports and will continue to observe our rigorous health and safety protocols, which include daily testing for all student-athletes and are based on guidance from leading medical experts.”
So far on the season, Duke is 3-1 but has had three games in the last two weeks postponed due to COVID-19.
