When NC State women’s soccer dropped the stunning news Monday morning that it was not going to participate this fall, the natural assumption was perhaps this could be a COVID-19 matter or perhaps even related to the recent other sports protesting social injustice.

Wolfpack head coach Tim Santoro insists it is neither, although COVID-19 may have assisted some on the development. In terms of the disease itself, however, Santoro said there had been only one positive test out of around 150 on the team since they returned in July, and that player has already rejoined the roster.

The chain reaction that led to the cancelation is rooted back to the spring. Santoro had signed four international recruits in the 2020 class, a group in which he had high hopes. But of the four, only goalkeeper Maria Echezarreta from Spain decided in the spring to continue to try to enroll at NC State. The other three, at Santoro’s encouragement, decided to go ahead and sign professional contracts.

“At the time we couldn’t guarantee any visas, we didn’t know what travel restrictions would be, we couldn’t guarantee a season,” Santoro noted.

NC State already had a pair of international players who played key roles on a Pack squad that in 2019 made the Sweet 16 for the third time in four years — All-ACC senior defender Lulu Guttenberger from Germany and regular starting junior midfielder Toni Starova from Czech Republic that faced their own questions about returning.

“This wasn’t the best place to come to,” Santoro admitted. “I don’t think anyone was rushing to come to the United States in July.”

Thus, already down five players on the planned 2020 roster, Santoro knew it could get touchy if the team suffered injuries. Two returning players were already limited in their attempts to come back from injuries suffered last year, and then two more went down in training camp last week.

At that point, Santoro approached NC State administrators and fellow coaches across the league. A recent change in the ACC plans for soccer in the fall had further complicated the situation.

“We knew we couldn’t afford to lose anyone, that’s what we knew,” Santoro explained. “We were prepared to go with that number. We knew it was going to be tight.

“At the time, we were also only going to play six or seven games. We got into a room last week with the conference and all the sudden we were told the schedule’s changing again, there were going to be more games. … They are not single game weekends, they were going to be double weekends.

“So now we are playing with a small roster on a double weekends, which I wasn’t 100 percent in favor of. Then when we had the injuries in practice, it’s not safe to put such a small number out on the field because you are going to have more injuries in the span of a season. I’ve never gone through a season without injuries … I just thought it was better once we get to that point to make a decision before we get started. I just felt like it was the fairest thing to everyone involved.”

Santoro said that his players have been disappointed but also “awesome.”

“They knew it was going to get tough if we started having injuries in preseason, and we had a few,” Santoro said. “They were concerned … we are the best soccer conference in the country. You play those teams with 13-14 players, that’s going to wear on you quick. They were disappointed, but they were not shocked by the decision.”

The team will stay in Raleigh and continue training with Santoro’s staff. There is a chance that the spring will present options to play. Santoro noted that over 280 women’s soccer teams are not playing this fall. The ACC is also only intending to play around 10 games, and you are typically allowed 20 in the fall.

If the conference permits it and the NCAA moves ahead with plans to try to hold a soccer championship in the spring, ACC teams may try to play another 10 or so games in the spring, which could present NC State with opportunities to participate in league contests then.

Santoro believes that his team will be healthy and the roster full enough to handle playing at that point, if the opportunity presents itself.

“We were intending to play [in the fall],” Santoro added. “We would love to be playing right now. This isn’t a choice because we are making a political stand or were worried about the virus. Our protocols have been great, our testing have been great for our team. We wanted to play. We just simply ran into a numbers crunch.”

When they do return, Santoro has high expectations.

“We were going to be young,” Santoro acknowledged. “We graduated an impactful class of five or six people, but we were going to be good. We had some good internationals coming, and we had some good domestic freshmen, and we just had some current players that had developed over the last year or so.

“We are going to be a top program for a while. We are not going anyway. This year was going to be some different faces doing it, but I do think we were going to be pretty good. We’ll have the majority of that group back, and we’ll be announcing a really good recruiting class in November.

“Whenever we play again next fall, I think we’re going to be pretty good.”

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