When prep sports got the green light
MEL moved forward after California lifted stay-at-home order Editor’s note: The Reporter is running a series of stories looking back and forward at how the pandemic affected local athletes, coaches and administrators.
Everything on the high school sports scene changed virtually overnight.
On Monday, Jan. 25, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California health officials had ended the state’s regional stayat-home order. That order was
the only thing holding back high school sports designated in the purple tier from beginning competition.
The Monticello Empire League’s Board of Managers met the next day.
“At the Sac-Joaquin Section Board of Managers meeting a motion was passed to have all sports, for the remainder of this year, be in one season,” said MEL Commissioner Joan Mumaugh. “The 2021 season will be from Feb. 1 to June 12 (for most sports) with each league deciding when to run each sport according
to their county tier color designation… Currently being in the purple tier gives us the options of cross county, golf, swimming/diving, tennis and track.”
At a news conference that Wednesday, Sac-Joaquin Section Commissioner Michael Garrison expanded on the decision by the section’s Board of Governors to compact what would have been two seasons of sport into one season that stretches from Feb. 1toJune12.
One of the key points was that the football season must end by April 17 in order for the athletes
to have enough recuperation time between the end of the spring season and the beginning of the fall season.
The Sac-Joaquin Section also decided there will be no playoffs, in part because of the problems that COVID travel restrictions create. This means its teams will not be involved in any kind of state championship. Garrison noted that CIF will make a decision about the state championship for other sections after each section meets to determine their schedules.
The COVID color coding for sports remained the same. Purple-tier sports included cross country, track and field, swimming/diving, golf and tennis. Redtier sports included baseball and softball. Football, volleyball, soccer and badminton were in the orange tier, while basketball, competitive cheer and wrestling were in the yellow tier.
On Friday, Feb. 5, the MEL gave the go-ahead for competition in three high school sports in the purple tier — cross country, girls tennis and boys golf. The two other sports that the California Interscholastic Federation allowed to be played in the purple tier — swimming/diving and track and field — did not yet get the green light from MEL.
It was most likely a relief to local high school track and field coaches that their sport was not starting yet. Even though they could probably have cross country athletes practice in the same cohort as the long-distance runners on the track team, the workload of an athlete participating in both sports at the
same time would probably be overwhelming and unrealistic.
There might need to be a waiting period between when an athlete completes a season in one sport and starts another. Because he or she will be moving into a new cohort, the athlete may have to undergo a quarantine period. Schools will have to check with their county health departments for guidance in that area.
On Feb. 8 the MEL released schedules for all its high school sports in a one-season calendar that ranged from Feb. 15 to the end of the school year. The MEL categorized the sports into three groups — A. B and C, roughly in line with the colored coronavirus tiers.
Group A includes sports allowed in the purple tier — cross country, girls tennis and boys golf — as well as football, which is the orange tier.
MEL Commissioner Joan Mumaugh explained football’s inclusion in Group A.
“By San-Joaquin Section rules, football needs to be complete by April 16,” she said. “In order to give them a chance to start practice immediately when they are eligible by California Department of Public Health
and Solano County Health, we added them into the first group. Football is required to have ten days of practice before competing, which means they must be able to start by March 1 to play their five-game schedule.”
That schedule consists of one game against each of the other five MEL opponents. The Black and Blue Bowl, the rivalry game between Will C. Wood and Vacaville, is scheduled to be played at Vacaville on Friday, April 16.
But football first needed to clear the orange tier health hurdle.
In Group B, the start dates are March 23 for badminton, baseball and volleyball, and March 24 for softball, swimming/ diving, and track and field.
For Group C, girls soccer begins on April 13, boys soccer on April 14, girls basketball on April 27, and wrestling and boys basketball on April 28.
In a news release on February 10, CIF said that it had reached out to the California Department of Public Health regarding high school athletes competing in more than one sport. CIF stated, “We have confirmed that their specific language regarding cohorting and multiteam participation is not a mandate, but a recommendation.”
The bottom line was that high school athletes could take on more than one sport this spring.
Soon thereafter, the state essentially removed the color-coded tier system for outdoor high school sports, stating that they could be played once a county was under the threshold of 14 COVID cases per 100,000.
On Tuesday, Feb. 23, the Solano County Public Health Department said, “The state reported a 12.3 rate today for the time period from February 7 to February 13.”
That was cause for jubilation throughout the local high school sports community, as it gave the green light for football, soccer, baseball, softball, water polo and lacrosse to get practice going for the first time in nearly 12 months.
The cherry on top came on March 4 when a legal settlement with the state of California gave the goahead for indoor sports like basketball, volleyball and wrestling to be played this spring. Many schools are still trying to figure out how that might work.