Coaches hoping sport gets go-ahead for meets

For the past seven weeks, area cross country teams have been able to get together and practice, albeit with some minor restrictions and changes.

As of now, that’s all they can do.

On July 14, the OHSAA put out an announcement stating that cross country had yet to be determined as a low contact sport, meaning that, for the time being, cross country teams aren’t allowed to hold competitions between schools.

And while that decision might seem silly at first glance — the whole point of the sport is to put as much distance between you and everyone else, after all — area cross country coaches understand why their sport hasn’t been approved yet.

The biggest thing coaches pointed to as a potential roadblock to being named low-contact is the start of races, as runners from all the participating schools line up next to each other in their starting chutes. That problem that is only amplified at invitationals, as some area invitationals feature up to as many as 40 teams all trying to jam into one shared starting space.

“I guess I can kind of see it because when you start these invitationals there’s a lot of kids squeezed into a small area,” Columbia coach Adam Bailey said. “While they’re not necessarily supposed to touch each other, they’re awfully close to each other for the first 100 meters until everyone naturally spaces out. We’ve got to be smart about this and make sure that the kids are safe since the case numbers seem to be exploding right now.”

While limiting the number of teams at a meet or invitational will obviously help cut down on the cramming at the start of the races, Bailey also thinks teams will have to slim down their rosters.

“They could do it where each team only is allowed to run seven kids per race,” he said “Some divisions cap the number of runners a team can race with at 10 while other divisions don’t cap it at all. And you can do that because of the GPS chips on the shoes now. When I was a kid only the top seven kids ran varsity and when you finished, you’d get a popsicle stick that you’d take to your coach and they’d add up your score. They might have to go to something like that where they limit the amount of kids in a race and are going to have to have more races and just make the day a little longer.”

Even if the decision is made to cut down on the number of runners and number of teams, cross country meets and invitationals will still be busy events, in part because that every competition features four races (varsity boys, varsity girls, middle school boys, middle school girls).

“We have 10 girls and probably 25 guys on the high school team alone,” Firelands coach Steve Silas said. “You’re looking at thousands and thousands of visitors with people all over the place. Maybe you could cut down the amount of people that come in and cut down on the teams. Maybe we only run 10 teams at a time and try to find a way to spread out the starting chutes. Maybe you run middle school on a different day.”

Both Silas and Bailey serve as the track and field coaches at their respective schools, which means they were among the countless coaches nationwide who watched their seniors have their final season ripped away. And while they’re preparing for their senior cross country runners to have a final season, they’re also preparing for that season to feature some tough sacrifices.

“You’re probably looking at having less, if any, fans at meets this year,” Silas said. “We have a seniorladen team and now we’re going tell those parents that they can’t come watch their child’s last races. It’s going to be tough; I don’t think it’s fair to the parents.”

Silas and Bailey have both had to make adjustments to their practice routines. In years prior, Silas would sometimes let his runners make up their course as they go, something that’s now a thing of the past.

“I think it hasn’t been too bad, since, if you think about it, we’re out in the middle of a field or the woods and not in a gym,” he said. “We’ve been making sure we have everyone running in the same direction as opposed to before where they’d run different routes to get their miles. We’ve also had to change our water situation, since we supplied that in years past.”

When Columbia first got together for practice, Bailey split his team up into two groups, with one running in the morning and the other running at night. While the Raiders are back to running in one group, they’re still being cognizant of the distancing protocols put in place.

“With everything that’s going on with Lorain County, we wear masks now while we’re waiting around,” he said. “They take the masks off when they’re running and then put them back on when they’re done after they’ve caught their breath. Some of the kids are nervous, and rightfully so.

“I’ve had a couple kids decide to run on their own because they live with older parents or grandparents. So they’re fearful of contracting the virus and spreading it. Almost all my kids are running every day. They’re very excited and very hopeful that we’re going to have a cross country season.”

The Raiders are supposed open their season on Aug. 21 at the Keystone Ice Breaker. Bailey said he gives the race a “50/50 shot” of happening on time.

“It could go either way,” Bailey said of the race. “If the cases keep spiking, I don’t know how anybody is going to be able to justify having athletics, especially if we can’t go to school full-time. I think it would be hard to say that kids can’t sit together at school but can get together with hundreds of other kids and compete.”

Even with all the uncertainty surrounding the fall, Bailey believes that his runners will be ready for the season — if it ever happens.

“I actually expect the times to be really good this year since I think a lot of kids have realized that their season could be taken away at any time,” he said. “I’ve got kids who are really working hard this fall because their track season was taken away.”