The NCAA has granted an additional year of eligibility to spring-sport student-athletes who saw their 2020 seasons cut short by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it announced Monday night.

“The Council’s decision gives individual schools the flexibility to make decisions at a campus level,” said Division 1 Council chair M. Grace Calhoun, athletics director at Penn. “The Board of Governors encouraged conferences and schools to take action in the best interest of student-athletes and their communities, and now schools have the opportunity to do that.”

The ruling gives the individual school the ability to self-apply a waiver to restore one season of eligibility for any athlete who competed this year.

The Council also will allow schools to self-apply a one-year extension of eligibility for spring-sport student-athletes, effectively extending each student’s five-year “clock” by a year.

The council also adjusted financial aid rules to allow more players on scholarship per team to account for seniors who would have exhausted their eligibility this season with new recruits, of course, coming in next year as well.

South Carolina athletics director Ray Tanner said a few weeks ago that he was completely in favor of spring-, and even winter-, sport athletes getting a year of eligibility back.

The NCAA did not extend eligibility for winter-sport student-athletes.