The Ohio Valley Conference Board of Presidents announced changes to their fall schedules for Olympic sports Wednesday, opting to postpone the start of competition until September 17th.  They also plan to conduct conference-only competition in women’s soccer and volleyball.  That decision effects both Southern Illinois programs, who have multiple OVC schools on their non-conference slates.

SIU Women’s Soccer’s sophomore season will now be without a majority of their non-conference slate with games against Murray State(@ 8/12), Eastern Illinois (vs. 8/21), Morehead State (@ 8/21), Belmont (@ 8/30), Tennessee Tech (vs. 9/4), SIU-Edwardsville (@ 9/6) all wiped from the 17-game season.

SIU Volleyball isn’t nearly as hard-hit.  They will be have three games wiped from their schedule.  A pair of SIU tournaments will be affected with the Saluki Bash (9/11-9/12) including Eastern Illinois and the SIU Invitational (9/18-9/20) including SEMO.  In between, a game at UT-Martin (9/15) has also been lost from the schedule.

The decision does not include football because of contractual reasons, so SIU Football’s games with UT-Martin and SEMO are safe for the time being.