Now that the PacWest Conference is postponing its fall sports competition until after Jan. 1, 2021, can its intercollegiate neighbor, the Big West Conference, be far behind in doing the same?

The Division II PacWest pulled the plug on the fall slate of sports (cross country, soccer and volleyball) Thursday and it will be a surprise if the Division I Big West doesn’t quickly follow suit in the next week.

Not because the Big West necessarily takes its lead from what the PacWest does, but because it makes a lot of sense. Many of their circumstances mirror each other and the PacWest made the right, informed call given the tenor of these pandemic-pounded times.

The Big West, which includes the University of Hawaii, five University of California campuses and five Cal State University schools stretching from Davis to San Diego, said Monday that its board of directors would announce “a direction related to the fall 2020 sports season … no later than Aug. 1.”

The PacWest, which is composed of Chaminade, UH-Hilo, Hawaii Pacific and eight California private schools reaching from San Francisco to San Diego, said it took the action, “due to rapidly changing information and guidelines from the NCAA, as well as the states, counties, and areas where the 11 PacWest institutions compete.”

The PacWest said a decision on the start of the 2020-21 winter sports season, as well as the non-championship segments of spring sports, is expected to be made by Oct. 1.

Apart from sharing much of the same geographic footprint and many of the same COVID-19 hotspots, the two conferences are also sans football, which means that the decision is less driven by the need to preserve what would otherwise be its biggest breadwinner.

“It was kind of a yo-yo decision,” said Pat Guillen, UH-Hilo athletic director. “We were probably averaging at least two (conference) calls a week. Some weeks things looked more positive and some were less positive. I think everybody wanted to fight as much as possible for (a season) for our student-athletes but, when it finally got down to it, we just couldn’t justify having these sports in the best interests of the health and safety of our athletes. That was the No. 1 thing.”

The PacWest said members will still be permitted to conduct organized team activities at their own discretion, including workouts, practices, strength and conditioning, and access to their athletic training staff, per governmental guidelines. Options for moving fall sport schedules into the winter or spring are being reviewed.

What could emerge, if the Big West joins the PacWest on a parallel track, is that the Hawaii based-schools, Chaminade, Hilo, HPU and Manoa could be seeing more of each other on the courts and baseball fields in the coming months.

With nonconference opponents harder to come by, leaner operations and COVID-19 travel concerns, increasing competition among the local schools to fill scheduling pukas makes good sense and the NCAA has loosened some of its restrictions on play against out of division opponents.

As Guillen puts it, “In college athletics, it doesn’t matter what division you are in, as long as this pandemic is around, we all have to put our thinking caps on. We all have to get very, very creative in what we have to do.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.