A new ‘challenge’
The 3-week sports shutdown no surprise to District 11 officials. The next battle starts Jan. 4.
District 11 chairman Bob Hartman listened to Gov. Tom Wolf’s news conference late Thursday afternoon and admitted “it was hard to argue with a lot of things he said from a health and safety standpoint.”
That included Wolf’s announcement of a three-week shutdown for all extracurricular activities, including practices and games for high school sports, that will begin at 12:01 a.m. Saturday and will continue until 8 a.m. on Jan. 4.
Hartman, who is also the Whitehall athletic director and the vice president of the PIAA’s board of control, had heard the rumors about a shutdown all week.
The two local leagues, the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and the Colonial League, already had begun preparations.
The EPC announced last week that winter sports season competitions in boys and girls basketball, boys and girls swimming and wrestling, wouldn’t begin until Jan. 15 and regular seasons would be reduced to 10 games — down from the usual 16 — in basketball.
Earlier this week, the Colonial League voted to delay its winter sports contests until Jan. 11, also going with a 10-game schedule in basketball, down from the usual 17 or 18.
OnWednesday, the PIAA unveiled new winter sports tournament formats that reduced the number of qualifiers and a later start of the state basketball tournament to give leagues and districts more time to get in games.
It also declared that only district champs would advance to states and added that even teams eliminated from district and state tournament consideration could still play games through March 27, which is the date the PIAA’s basketball tournament is set to conclude in Hershey.
With all of those steps completed, Hartman was not surprised a shutdown was announced.
His hope now is that things can restart on time on Jan. 4.
“That’s going to be the challenge,” he said. “The PIAA board of directors
“It’s a weird year but we try to focus on what we can control. It’s a year where you’re going to have to roll with the punches.” — Executive Education Academy coach Ray Barbosa
did some really good things on Wednesday. People wanted us to delay, delay, delay, but by changing dates, we made the season much longer. Assuming we can get out of this the right way, we can still provide a meaningful regular season and playoff structure for our kids. We want kids to be able to compete as much as they can. That’s always been our goal.”
The winter sports season is set to begin Friday and at least two boys basketball games are still scheduled — Notre Dame-Green Pond at Executive Education Academy Charter School and Pottsville Nativity at Allentown Central Catholic. The Vikings, expected to be one of the area’s top teams in boys basketball, are holding Senior Night festivities prior to the game.
Several more games were scheduled for Saturday including CCHS at Exeter and Notre Dame at Northwestern Lehigh in boys basketball. Those games have been canceled.
Whitehall, Bethlehem Catholic and Palisades were among the other schools who had basketball games scheduled before the Christmas break.
The 2019-20 basketball season was impacted by the pandemic in March. The PIAA state tournament was canceled while the Freedom, Nazareth and Bethlehem Catholic girls were still involved as were the Tamaqua boys.
The 2019-20 wrestling season had been completed before the pandemic hit, but the wrestlers are also affected this time.
It appears the Powerade tournament, the last major wrestling event that was still scheduled to be held Dec. 27-28 will be canceled but there has been no official word. Bethlehem Catholic, Notre Dame-Green Pond and Faith Christian were among the 56 teams entered.
Once practices are allowed to resume in all sports, the issue for teams will be if they have completed their required 15 days of preseason practices.
Many programs started practice on Nov. 20, the first date teams in all winter sports could practice. Those teams will be in the best position if things resume on schedule Jan. 4.
Others, including Northampton and Nazareth, both of whom started practice Monday, will need 10 days of practice beginning Jan. 4 before they can begin competition. Easton had eight practices in through Wednesday, so it will need seven more. Palmerton, which started practicing Dec. 1, will need as few as five workouts.
In addition to fulfilling the preseason requirement, those programs might have an additional four days of preseason practices to get in as mandated by the PIAA for schools that have been off more for than 14 consecutive days.
“I don’t think even those four additional practice days will affect anyone in the EPC,” Hartman said. “We’re planning on playing Nazareth in boys basketball on Jan. 12 and if we can restart practice on Jan. 4, we should be good to go.”
Area basketball coaches have worked with their teams for several weeks knowing that a shutdown could come at any time.
“It’s a weird year but we try to focus on what we can control,” said Executive Education Academy coach Ray Barbosa. “It’s a year where you’re going to have to roll with the punches.”
“That’s life,” first-year Allen coach Darnell Braswell said. “You have to adjust and adapt. If there’s anything 2020 taught us, it’s that you can’t anything for granted.”
Hartman said that having been through a similar situation in the fall will help athletic directors navigate a challenging scheduling situation.
“We did a great job in the fall and I don’t see that changing ... we pause and pivot,” he said. “We’ll figure it out because we have all good people on so many levels of this. From superintendents to athletic directors to coaches to the PIAA board of directors. Tomorrow is another day. We’ll figure it out because we all have the same goals and that’s to keep kids healthy and safe. From an athletic standpoint, we want them to get out there and do what they love to do.”
Ultimately, though, the athletes, coaches, athletic directors and administrators are not in control.
“A deadly virus is in control,” Hartman said. “That’s the one thing we can’t control.”
Wolf’s announcement came on a day when the state reported more than 11,972 more cases of the virus and 248 more deaths.