AAU Junior Olympics eyes August in Florida

The AAU Junior Olympics is proceeding with a plan to stage its multi-sport event as scheduled, including track and field at a high school in Florida in August with some events not being contested.

Perhaps there may be some outdoor track and field contested in 2020 after all amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The AAU Junior Olympics, which originally was slated to be hosted in Hampton Roads, Va., changed venue and dates to Aug. 5-8 at Satellite High School in Satellite Beach, Fla., about an hour southeast of Orlando on the Atlantic coast.

The National Scholastic Athletics Foundation announced in mid-June it was cancelling its annual outdoor nationals meet, after an attempt to move the meet to Sioux Falls, S.D., from July 30-Aug. 2. And the high school season in Ohio was canceled as a result of COVID-19 as well.

June 11, formal plans were announced for the multi-sport AAU Junior Olympics to be staged as a whole on Florida’s Space Coast in a news conference with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, local tourism officials and AAU president and CEO Roger Goudy.

“There couldn’t be a better place to hold this event right now than at Florida’s Space Coast,” Goudy said at the time. “The support and commitment we’ve seen at all levels, from Gov. DeSantis to Brevard County local officials, has been impressive. Working together, we are laying a strong, solid foundation for what will be an exciting 54th edition of the AAU Junior Olympic Games.”

Specific information on how the meet will be staged with COVID-19 precautions has yet to be disclosed.

A registration window for the event began June 17 and closes July 23 and remains open as of June 30. Since qualifying events were canceled due to the pandemic and in accordance with state regulations, the meet is open registration but is being limited to fields in each division of 48 for running events and 36 for field events.

Several events will not be contested, including triple jump, javelin, high jump and pole vault in the field, along with pentathlon, heptathlon and decathlon.

Its divisions from 8- to 18-and-under remain intact. The lone requirement to compete, without the usual qualifying process, is a 2020 AAU membership.

Athletes and spectators are being requested to wear masks while in attendance at the meet. A tentative event schedule is available on aausports.org.

On its AAU track and field Facebook page, several users lamented the governing body’s decision to proceed. In May, as the AAU sought a new venue and dates for its Junior Olympics, it addressed concern over staging competition at all in 2020 during a pandemic.