Update on preps
HHSAA awaits DOH response
HHSAA awaits response from DOH on COVID-19 guidelines
A meeting scheduled for Wednesday with the state Department of Health was postponed, but Hawaii High School Athletic Association Executive Director Chris Chun is hopeful sports are on track to return soon.
“We submitted our HHSAA guidelines, the draft of our (COVID19) guidelines to the Department of
Health,” Chun said via phone on Wednesday. “In our guidelines we have when we’re allowed to play sports — low risk, moderate risk, and high risk and that kind of thing.
“We’re just waiting to see what they say about it. We were supposed to have a meeting today and they were supposed to try and give us feedback by today, but it got postponed. So, we just have to wait until they have comments on it and say whether or not it’s approved.”
Chun is hopeful that word from the state DOH comes by the end of this week or early next week.
“I know they’re working on their own return to sports guidlines and we probably have to follow what’s in that in addition to what’s in ours,” Chun said.
He said “our guidelines just say how we’d handle sports once we’re allowed to start. We have our tentative draft of our calendar to start in January, but that’s contingent on the Department of Education allowing schools to start working out on their campuses.”
The HHSAA draft of guidelines allows student-athletes at schools that are mostly online to participate in practice and competition.
“I did it to model after the Department
of Health return-to-school guidelines,” Chun said. “So Maui County is allowed to (do) in-person learning, for the schools that want to. So for us, I said if a county is in that position where in-person is allowed, that all sports would be allowed. If it’s blended, then moderate sports would be allowed, moderate and low risk. If they’re at-home learning, then no sports would be allowed.
“It doesn’t matter whether the schools choose to do it, it’s just whether the county allows it.”
Chun said the HHSAA plan would allow some schools to compete in certain sports while others may choose not to.
“It would just be up to the schools whether or not they want to,” he said. “Some schools if they don’t want to do in-person learning, they probably wouldn’t want to do all sports. It would be up to the school.”
The bottom line for Chun is he sees progress being achieved.
“Yeah, I mean, we weren’t able to even meet with them for a couple months and now we’re setting schedules to meet once a week,” he said. “So, they promised comments on our guidelines and they promised to draft their own set, so, yeah, we’re definitely moving forward now.”
He added that he is confident that some sports will be back in January.
“I think at some level we will have something,” he said. “Whether it’s full-on interscholastic competition, I guess that just depends on where we are as a state in our battle with this virus.”
He said the Maui Interscholastic League may be one of most likely to play football this school year.
“I guess it just depends, like, for counties like Maui and Kauai that are doing well, I think so, but for other counties that are struggling or have higher case loads that’s going to be tough,” Chun said.
MIL athletic directors recently submitted tentative schedules to MIL Executive Director Joe Balangitao for winter and spring sports. That move was in large part to start the permit process to reserve venues for the various sports if things are allowed to move forward.
There could be challenges to have enough officials available for whatever sports may happen. Venues could also be in high demand.
“I hope we have that challenge,” Chun said. “Because that means that we have more than low-risk sports that are able to go. Because, I mean, for that to happen we would have to have multiple sports that are approved to run. So, we should worry about that first before worrying about other stuff.”
Chun said venues for state tournaments are reserved.
“We have our venues,” he said. “With probably limits on attendance, or whatever the restriction attendance guidelines that the state has imposed, we would probably run them at smaller venues like high schools and stuff anyway.”
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Robert Collias is at rcollias @mauinews.com