The Northwest Conference announced Wednesday that high-contact fall sports will be moved to the spring of 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Whitworth is one of nine schools in the conference, which includes teams from Washington and Oregon.

Affected sports at Whitworth include football, volleyball and soccer (men’s and women’s). Women’s rowing is also postponed, but the Pirates do not field a program.

The NWC is working to develop a schedule for competition for these sports in the spring.

Men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s golf and men’s and women’s tennis will be permitted to play this fall in accordance with local, state and federal health directives.

Whitworth had already lost its entire nonconference football schedule for 2020 due to fears of coronavirus spread. In June, the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference announced it would not play nonconference games this fall, eliminating two of Whitworth’s September games, against Occidental and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.

Additionally, the contest against Saint John’s in Collegeville, Minnesota – set to be the program’s first regular-season game outside the Pacific time zone since 2017 – was canceled.

This story will be updated.