Report: OHSAA cautious on fall sports

Governing body beginning to look at options if coronavirus pandemic continues into late summer

Is the 2020 high school football season in jeopardy because of the novel coronavirus outbreak?

Not yet, but according to a report out of Cincinnati, the Ohio

High School Athletic Association has started to consider the possibility.

According to WCPO out of Cincinnati, the OHSAA has begun to consider options should the COVID-19 pandemic spread into the month of August and beyond.

The OHSAA has already canceled the remainder of the winter tournaments, a decision made this past week by the governing body of scholastic sports in Ohio.

Spring sports remain indefinitely suspended, and are facing an abbreviated season even if schools in Ohio resume in time to do so.

Could this COVID-19 pandemic stretch into the fall sports season? In an interview with WCPO, OHSAA executive director Jerry Snodgrass admitted it could.

“Friday in our daily meeting that we have with staff — not that we weren’t thinking about it — but now we’re starting to look at what if we are delayed in football?” OHSAA executive director Jerry Snodgrass told WCPO. “What if

we are delayed in our fall sports? Cross country (is) one of the earliest starts.”

The 2020 fall sports season is scheduled to open Aug. 1, with cross country, field hockey, football, golf, soccer, girls tennis and volleyball all able to hold their first practice on that day.

“I know that people will challenge that a little bit, but we are looking at now fall,” Snodgrass said. “We’re starting to plan.”

As of now, as per order of Governor Mike DeWine, all schools in Ohio are closed until April 6. But that date is fluid, as DeWine and Ohio Dept. of Health Director Dr.

Amy Acton have said in their daily news conferences.

“Our plans are to come back then,” Snodgrass told WCPO. “We also know that if that’s not realistic, then we have a plan if it’s May 1. If it’s the end of May, there is a possibility. I mean there is some very remote possibilities.”

Snodgrass told WCPO the decision to cancel the winter tournaments was made in part via information from DeWine and Acton and the peak of the coronavirus in Ohio.

“Just at that point in time we had to go with the numbers,” Snodgrass said.

Jeff Cassella, athletic director at Mentor and a member of the OHSAA’s Northeast District Board, said he too has considered the ramifications of the current COVID-19 outbreak stretching into the fall sports season.

“I hope not,” he said. “I’ll say this — if this stretches into fall, we have bigger problems than athletics.”

One of those problems would be of the financial nature.

On a statewide scale, Snodgrass said the OHSAA lost between $1.4 and $1.5 million by canceling its winter sports tournaments, which is a large hunk of its

$19 million budget.

Of all the sports the OHSAA sanctions, football is the biggest influx to not only the OHSAA’s budget, but also the budget of every high school in Ohio that offers football as a varsity sport.

If his school lost one or more of the revenues from a football game that was canceled because of the COVID-19 outbreak, Cassella said it would be problematic to his school’s athletic department budget.

The threat of an impact of COVID-19 on fall sports isn’t only that of the OHSAA. College football

analyst Kirk Herbstreit said last week he could see both NCAA and NFL football being called off because of the coronavirus.

“I’ll be shocked if we have NFL football this fall, if we have college football. I’ll be so surprised if that happens,” Herbstreit said. “Just because from what I understand, people that I listen to, you’re 12 to 18 months from a (coronavirus) vaccine. I don’t know how you let these guys go into locker rooms and let stadiums be filled up and how you can play ball. I just don’t know how you can do it with the optics of it.”