Catholic League devises hybrid plan for fall sports
Talk about your quick arounds.
Last Friday, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced that its 17 high schools could resume competition in the fall sports season, provided the schools followed health and safety guidelines.
Six days later, the Catholic League athletic directors have come up with a plan to move forward with fall sports.
“There were a ton of hurdles,” said Father Judge athletic director Jake Serfass, the chairperson of the Catholic League.
First, the ADs had to find out which schools were opting in and which weren’t. Then they had to determine which schools wanted to play league games to give their students an opportunity to have a season and which schools wanted to prioritize eligiblity for the PIAA playoffs.
The task is complicated by location: The rules are different for league members in the City of Philadelphia compared to those in the suburbs. Schools in the city are prohibited from holding games or practices that involve contact sports based on guidelines from the city’s Philadelphia Department of Health. That includes football, soccer and field hockey.
“We would have to bus our kids outside the city to practice football,” Serfass said. “You can only have 20 kids on a bus so we would be taking three or four buses to take our football team to a practice site. We would have to leave at 4 o’clock, probably, because we have to get the kids that are home, we’re doing a hybrid schedule, we have to somehow get those kids here on time, get them on the bus
turngo wherever we’re going. We have to try to get there before the sun goes down, practice maybe an hour and get them home. Maybe they get home around 8 o’clock without doing homework or without eating, and they’re doing that every day.”
For that reason, Judge and West Catholic opted to play all of its fall sports in the spring, with the exception of Judge’s cross country team. Archbishop Ryan, Roman Catholic, Neumann-Goretti and St. Joseph’s Prep will take part in fall football.
“We always talk about the safety of these kids,” Serfass said of Judge’s decision to opt out. “We felt we weren’t able to make sure that we knew that these guys would be safe.”
Once that determination was made, the ADs had to come up with a schedule that would accommodate the playoffs.
“All the classifications games need to be done first,” Serfass said. “After that, each individual athletic director schedules their games with whoever wants to play within the league.”
“There are still a lot of locations that are still up in the air to host home games so we’re still trying to figure out where these games will be played,” said B.J. Hogan, the football coach and athletic director at Cardinal O’Hara. “So we have flexibility with the schedule. The moderators have been told just to schedule the classification games.”
Football is scheduled to start the weekend of Oct. 16 and conclude Nov. 6. Soccer, field hockey and volleyball are scheduled to start in the next few weeks, Hogan said.
Class 6A football division consists of La Salle, St. Joseph’s Prep, Roman Catholic and Archbishop Wood. O’Hara, Bonner-Prender
gast and Archbishop Ryan are the three teams in Class 4A. Carroll is in Class 3A with Lansdale Catholic and Neumann-Goretti.
The brackets for the PIAA fall sports championships are expected to be finalized on Oct. 7, Hogan said.
“I think that once the scheduled gets released it will be good for the kids to see that O’Hara is going to go play Bonner and Ryan,” Hogan said. That may do some stuff for their mental well-being.”
Locally, O’Hara, Archbishop Carroll and Bonner-Prendergast are taking different approaches in different sports.
O’Hara has elected to take part in what is called the PIAA schedule in football, girls soccer, girls tennis, field hockey, volleyball and cross country. The Lions will play a leagueonly schedule in boys soccer and not be eligible for the playoffs. O’Hara also will play a nonleague football game against
Carroll on Wednesday, Nov. 25, the night before Thanksgiving.
Carroll will be a playoff participant in all of its fall sports except for girls tennis.
Bonner-Prendergast is eligible for the playoffs in football, field hockey and boys and girls cross country, and will play only league
games in boys and girls soccer and volleyball. All golf will be played in the spring.
“At this point, I’m just excited and happy for our teams, particularly our seniors,” Bonner-Prendergast AD Brian Wagner said. “I know they look forward to the opportunity we’re getting.”