Changes have been made for three upcoming Fresno State sports as Mountain West (MW) unveils its spring 2021 format Thursday.
On Thursday afternoon, the MW announced the 2021 regular season formats for baseball, volleyball and women’s soccer. Regular-season formats for softball, men’s and women’s tennis remain unchanged.
These format changes come after a few fall sports were postponed to the spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The scheduling formats announced are subject to change, in accordance with state, county and local health guidelines.
Although there were no changes made to softball and men’s and women’s tennis, Fresno State men’s tennis will be playing its last season as the program was cut in early October, along with women’s lacrosse and wrestling.
For baseball, a 36-game conference schedule format will take place over 14 weeks starting Feb. 27 and end on May 29. The schedule will be played in a double round-robin tournament format which has all MW programs play each other twice in the same order.
All MW baseball programs are permitted to play in non-conference games and each program has two open dates. 3-game series will be scheduled with doubleheaders on Saturdays and a final game on Sunday, except for Easter weekend and the final weekend, which will be played with a doubleheader on Friday and a final game on Saturday.
The regular-season champion for baseball will automatically qualify for the NCAA tournament as the MW’s representative.
For volleyball, a 16-match conference-only schedule will take place over nine weeks starting Feb. 5 and end April 3. Each MW program will play six opponents, twice, and four opponents once.
Volleyball will be using a hybrid schedule format where the first seven weeks of the season will feature teams facing the same opponent twice in one weekend, at one site.
The regular-season champion for volleyball will automatically qualify for the NCAA tournament as the MW’s representative.
For women’s soccer, a 10-match conference-only schedule will take place over a six-week period starting March 5 and end April 11. Women’s soccer will also be following a divisional double round-robin format.
Matches will be played on Fridays and Sundays.
A single match will take place on Saturday, April 17, at a campus site between the two division winners to determine the conference automatic qualifier to the NCAA tournament.
As of now, only men’s and women’s basketball have non-conference start dates as well as set conference schedules.
