The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Area athletic directors prep for opening of facilities
High school athletics will return to Lorain county on June 1, just not in a way that anyone is used to.
After the OHSAA’s announcement that individual skill training can begin May 26, Lorain County League Athletic Directors met to discuss their plan for reopening their athletic facilities.
After some deliberation, the group of eight decided on June 1 as the date that athletes will be allowed back into their facilities to train.
“We all felt that we didn’t want to start right away on the 26th,” said Firelands AD Ty Stillman. “We feel as if we want to have a plan, so we all Zoomed one night at like 9 p.m. when this first thing came out and agreed that it would be beneficial to all of us that we try to open up on the same day.”
The LC8’s uniformity about a starting date wasn’t shared across the Morning Journal coverage area, however, as the leaders of the Southerwestern Conference decided to let schools handle the decision on when to reopen as opposed to setting a date for the entire conference.
“We’re trying to open things in phases,” Westlake athletic director Tony Cipollone said. “I think that with our outdoor facilities, we’re looking at what our recreation center is doing.
“They opened up their tennis courts. We don’t have a big enough ego to not look at what our people are doing successfully. It’s just one of those things where you look at guidelines and figure out how we can best implement them.”
Cipollone spent the days after the announcement consulting with leadership from his school to figure out how to move forward.
While he hasn’t announced an official reopening date for Westlake, Cipollone is making sure to pay attention to what works.
“We haven’t come up with a strong date,” he said. “We want to open some things as quickly as we can, but we also want to make sure we’re not pulling back. We’ve been in a district that has kind of waited with some other things to make the best possible decision. The thing that stinks the worst is that you say something and then have to pull it back. We don’t want to open the track and then have to close it two weeks later. We want to open it and have some rules and policies in place.”
The schools that have a set date for reopening have already begun to tackle the OHSAA’s guidelines, limiting sessions to 10 athletes. Firelands and Keystone have online signup sheets that allow players and coaches to reserve times in the weight room.
“We have a Google sheet that the coaches have access to, so they’ll be able to reserve a time slot based on our facilities that will be open,” Keystone AD Jonathan Bailey said. “The idea behind that is all of our coaches and myself can see who is going to be on what practice field or who’s going to be in the weight room and what time, so it can be properly sanitized before and after.”
LC8 schools are in a much different spot than schools like those in the SWC. The largest school in the LC8 is Keystone which sits in Division IV for football. The smallest, Columbia and Oberlin both reside in D-VI, a full four divisions lower than the entire SWC.
With upwards of 300 fall sports athletes, Cipollone and Westlake are working to figure out how to make things work within the guidelines set by the state.
“I went into our weight room a couple days ago with the guidelines to try to envision how many people could fit in there. It’s just tough, especially when
you have 300 fall sports athletes who are trying to get on fields and in weight rooms. There’s just so many things you think about.’
All this sets up one of the biggest questions in OHSAA history: Will there be a football season this fall, and, if so, what will it look like?
While the OHSAA hasn’t officially announced any changes to a potential high school football season this fall, it seems like a forgone conclusion that changes will have to be made in order for the season to start.
“I think the summer sports are going to be a good barometer of what we can expect in the fall,” Cipollone said. “Can I see us having football games without fans? Probably. But I can also see there being no football. I think it depends on how this thing progresses.”
If this year’s high school football season is cancelled, the results could be catastrophic for schools across the state, as most schools rely on football to fund a significant chunk of their athletic department.
“It’s a scary thought to not have football in the fall because I think that would change the whole dynamic of high school athletics for a couple years,” Cipollone said.
Even with guidelines in place, there still might be some players who might be hesitant to return to practice. That’s OK with Cipollone.
“If you’re not comfortable, then that’s fine, and I think we have to understand that as athletic directors and teammates,” he said. “If someone’s not comfortable, it’s not that they’re wimpy. Every kid is in a different situation and sometimes we don’t know what’s going on at home. There’s so many different stories out there. I think we have to be very empathic at this point and understand that every kid might be in a different situation.”
Staff Writer Rob DiFranco contributed to this story.