FALL SPORTS PLAN
Plans in the works on how high school sports may look in the fall.
As the academic year winds down, the state’s high school coaches and administrators are charged with turning the page on the canceled spring season, and planning for fall sports with a “new normal” in mind.
But what shape will that take? What will football, field hockey, soccer and other sports look like with the coronavirus still present?
“People are unprepared for any of this,” said New Britain AD Len Corto. “It’s all brand new territory.”
Harry Bellucci, Hartford Public’s football coach and chairman of the football committee, is getting texts and email from his fellow coaches, but has few answers for them. “We’re flying blind, I can tell you that,” he said.
Sandy Wickman Mason, field hockey coach at Granby, sums it up: “It’s unprecedented, challenging — and a little bit sad.”
The consensus of opinion is that there will be a fall season … eventually. The State of Connecticut is in phase one of its reopening plan, with more restrictions eased this week. Phase two tentatively planned for June 20 would include gyms and fitness centers, and allow youth sports outdoors with safety protocols in place. Phase three at least four weeks later, would allow outdoor events with gatherings of up to 100. Plans as of now call for the phased-in reopening of schools, starting with summer school July 6, culminating with the return of in-person classes in September, but a setback in controlling the spread of COVID-19 could push things back and the resumption of athletic activity would certainly entail a long list of health and safety guidelines.
“I’m approaching the fall as if everything is status quo,” said Trish Witkin, Glastonbury’s athletic director. “We’re returning, we’re going to return on time, and we’re planning our schedules, ADs are putting in their schedules now. So my approach is everything is going to go off as normal, but as the changes and phases and guidelines come out, we’ll start to look at things differently and put into action whatever those parameters are going to be.
“But there’s a bigger step coming before
that, the returning to learning. I am remaining optimistic that we will have some sort of athletic opportunity.”
The CIAC is in the process of developing a “resocializaton plan.” Superintendents, principals, athletic trainers, ADs and representatives from the sports medicine committee of the Connecticut State Medical Society are part of the process.
“There is still a lot of information to be gathered and a lot of unknowns to be answered,” said Glenn Lungarini, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Schools and the CIAC, “to be able to truly understand what sports we’ll be able to offer and if any modifications will be needed.”
The National Federation of High Schools is developing guidance for playing individual sports, categorizing sports as lower, moderate or higher risk. “When we consider a return, I think it’s probably logical to consider going in that order,” Lungarini said. “But the time frames of that may not be significantly apart.”
Cross country is one fall sport where social distancing could be carried off without too many issues, or golf, for schools that have it in the fall.
“But football,” Corto said, “because of the nature of the game, it’s going to be hard to be compliant with social distancing, unless we switched to football. I talk to my new football coach [Isaiah Boddie] just about every day and he’s prepared for a bunch of different scenarios, A, B and C. Scenario A, we start on time, as normal. … B, we start later and C, we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Coaches and organizations have been tossing out different ideas. Bellucci, who has been in on some coast-to-coast ZOOM sessions, said Michigan has talked about flipping seasons, playing baseball in the fall and football in the spring. There has been suggestion of football players wearing a clear shield that covers the entire face, but this could be ruled out because of risk of injury.
“They’ve talked about every kid, every coach will have to be tested,” Bellucci said. “Coaches will have to wear masks. But you still have 22 guys in a 15-yard area [at the line of scrimmage], that’s definitely a challenge, but you can’t practice football with 10 guys. There are so many moving parts.”
A big concern at the moment is for the young athletes, many of whom been relatively inactive since mid-March, to get the strength-and-conditioning training they need to prepare for the season. Coaches are sending workouts they can do, but in many towns the athletes are not allowed in the high school building at all. When that changes, it will likely be limited to 10, rotating assistant coaches may have to supervise in shifts.
Sharing equipment won’t be feasible anytime soon. Personal water bottles will be necessary.
“The old Gatorade jug with everybody going over to get a drink out of is probably going to be gone,” Corto said. “There’s a lot of stuff we’re going to have to face and figure out. Just the locker room space — you go into any normal locker room, the lockers are right next to each other. Even if you skip one, that’s only two or three feet.”
And transportation. To socially distance, a team that usually fits its players into one or two buses will need more, which, of course, means more money will be needed.
Volleyball could function with social distancing, but as an indoor sport it could be challenging to meet some requirements. Soccer and field hockey are played on large fields, but there is a lot of contact. Wearing masks would be doable for coaches, but would be hard for the athletes, Corto noted.
“It would be incredibly challenging,” Wickman Mason said. “I’ve been trying to envision how we do it. I would think there would be restrictions in numbers. I think of offensive and defensive drills; how do you social distance on a defensive drills? … We’re out on a turf field, where would we wash our hands?”
Field hockey camps scheduled for this summer are in limbo, unless they can be safely run by August. Wickman Mason, a vice president at Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine in Connecticut, is not as optimistic that obstacles could be overcome by the fall.
“It feels like the path right now is not lending itself to the opportunity to be playing in the fall,” she said. “I would call myself realistic. I’d like to be more optimistic about it, but I haven’t seen signs yet that it will happen.”
Others believe there will be fall sports, but not on time, or in the form of a complete season. One possibility, Bellucci said, is shortening the football season, perhaps at both ends, to work around a potential fall outbreak, completing playoffs before Thanksgiving, “which would eliminate Thanksgiving [games],” he said.
“… A lot of kids get offered scholarships based on their senior year performance. Ninety percent of the offers come off the kids’ film. If we don’t have a football season, that kid doesn’t get that film, it will make it difficult recruiting. My gut feeling is there will be a season of some kind.”
Everyone is preparing for the worst, but at the CIAC there remains hope for the best-case scenario.
“One of our messages that we’ve been consistent with is when the time is right, Connecticut will play again,” Lungarini said. “We’re getting to the point when the time is right, and we’re going to be there soon and I am confident that in the fall we will have some sort of sports experience.”