High school sports are back on.
In a virtual meeting Wednesday morning, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) Board of Directors unanimously approved the decision to update the 2020-2021 athletic calendar to bring high school sports back and allow for a fourth season. The resumption is pending safety modifications that still have to be hashed out by the MIAA Sports Medicine Committee and the individual sports committees.
“It’s a great first step and we’re excited to be able to offer our students every opportunity to compete when they come back to campus,” said St. Mary’s athletic director Jeff Newhall. “We still have work to do, but we’re happy that we’ll be able to offer some sports to students this fall. We’ve been in talks with our league (the Catholic Central League) all along the way and we’ve been preparing for something like this, so I feel like we’re in a good place.”
St. Mary’s is the only Lynn high school that will be returning to in-person classes this fall, as the rest of the city’s schools will open with fully remote learning.
Districts designated as red based on the Department of Public Health (DPH)’s metric of average daily cases per 100,000 residents — which locally would be Lynn, Saugus, Salem and Revere — and which therefore have their high school students learning remotely at the start of the season, must postpone their entire season, including practices, until the floating season later in the year.
If a non-red district begins with remote learning, the district’s school committee will vote to determine when the school will play. Districts designated as yellow, green, or unshaded based on the DPH metric that nonetheless have their high school students learning remotely at the start of the season may similarly delay their season to the floating season if they vote to do so.
The 2020-2021 athletic calendar will be restructured like so:
— Fall Sports (Sept. 18-Nov. 20): Boys and girls soccer, girls volleyball, boys and girls cross country, field hockey, swim and dive, golf and fall gymnastics.
— Winter Sports (Nov. 30-Feb. 21): Boys and girls basketball, boys and girls ice hockey, boys and girls indoor track and field, wrestling, winter gymnastics, alpine ski, nordic ski, winter cheerleading, dance and swim and dive.
— Fall Sports II “Floating Season” (Feb. 22-April 25): Football, fall cheerleading, Unified Basketball and any other fall sports not played in fall season because of remote learning/other reasons.
— Spring Sports (April 26-July 3): Baseball, softball, boys and girls lacrosse, boys and girls tennis, boys volleyball, boys and girls outdoor track, rugby, sailing, girls golf, crew.
Individual leagues will have the ability to adjust the specific dates of their seasons as they see fit with the approval of their District Athletic Committee (DAC).
Once the structure for the calendar was approved, the Task Force then moved to recommend that individual sports committees and the MIAA Sports Medicine Committee create the necessary modifications for fall sports (boys and girls soccer, girls volleyball, boys and girls cross country, field hockey, swim and dive, golf and fall gymnastics) by Tuesday, Aug. 25. The modifications must meet the standards set in the recent guidelines released by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA). The Board unanimously approved the recommendation.
The MIAA Sports Medicine Committee and the individual sports committees will collaborate on safety modifications for their respective sports to comply with EEA guidelines and have them by Aug. 25. Those modifications will be reviewed by the MIAA COVID-19 Task Force on Aug. 27 and will be sent to the MIAA President and Executive Director for final action by Sept. 1.
In addition, schools whose sports in the “Fall Sports” season have to be shut down, will have the ability to file a request with their DAC to be moved to the “Fall Sports II” season.
The Board of Directors also unanimously approved a motion that allows student-athletes to essentially play in all four seasons. Student-athletes would be able to participate in a “Fall Sports” season as well as participate in a sport that would be moved to the “Fall Sports II” season.
In terms of tournament play for the first fall season, it will not happen at the MIAA level. The Board of Directors unanimously approved a recommendation to eliminate MIAA-sponsored tournaments for only the fall 2020 season. Individual leagues would be allowed to stage their own tournaments, provided they comply with the EEA guidelines, but they will not be MIAA-sponsored.
Next up came one of the other big topics of the meeting — the decision on whether to allow out-of-season coaching for just the 2020-2021 athletic year.
“We wanted to allow out-of-season coaching for the emotional and mental well being of the kids,” said Task Force co-chair Thom Holdgate. “They’ve been separated from sports for a while. Allowing coaches to build and keep relationships with those students, we wanted to keep that open for everyone.”
But still, there was a lot of back-and-forth discussion about whether it makes sense to allow the out-of-season coaching. Concerns about kids practicing for one sport while still participating in another and potential pressure from coaches to participate in out-of-season work were all brought up.
But in the end, the Board approved the recommendation to allow out-of-season coaching as approved by the school principal by a vote of 13-7.
The Board of Directors held several other votes during a virtual call that included a number of media members and athletic directors in addition to members of the Board. Along with approving the athletic calendar, the Board voted to encourage schools to create a fall schedule that keeps them within their league/geographic area.
The next recommendation by the Task Force was for the Board to endorse the health and safety measures brought forth by the MIAA Sports Medicine Committee. Those measures are forthcoming. The Board of Directors approved the measure by a vote of 24-0.
The Board also voted to set a date of Oct. 29 to consider recommendations in regards to the winter season.
The next regularly scheduled MIAA Board of Directors meeting is set for Sept. 29.
Mike Alongi can be reached at [email protected].
