OHSAA seeking sites for winter state tournaments
Director ‘100% confident’ events will still proceed
The Ohio High School Athletic Association is actively seeking venues for multiple 2021 state tournaments, including the basketball and wrestling tournaments that typically are held on Ohio State's campus.
The OHSAA this week announced that four state tournaments — boys and girls basketball, wrestling and and hockey — are currently without a venue, with state tournaments for winter sports scheduled to begin in late February and March.
The boys basketball state tournament originally scheduled for March 18-20 in St. John Arena and the girls tournament scheduled on March 1113 at the University of Dayton will not, in all likelihood, be held at those sites. The wrestling state tournament is still scheduled for March 12-14, but won't be held at the Schottenstein Center.
It is not known if Nationwide Arena can host the hockey state semifinals and final on March 13-14.
OHSAA executive director Doug Ute said he's “100% confident” the state tournaments will take place as scheduled. The association is looking for alternative venues to ensure as many friends and family of athletes can watch competition in accordance to Gov. Mike Dewine's order on attendance at sporting events during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We learned a lot in the fall in terms of venues,” Ute said. “Really what we’re looking at here is to keep our kids playing and allow them to compete for state championships.
“We’re getting a lot of cooperation from our member schools and others who want to help out and make sure that our kids get a chance to play.”
The girls and boys basketball tournaments will follow the same format as in past years, with four games on each of the three days, but wrestling will change slightly this year.
Only seven weight classes will compete at a time, followed by a break, then the other seven weight classes.
Instead of one central facility for wrestling, the OHSAA is looking for three high schools, preferably in central Ohio, to host one division each. Regional sites have to be determined for girls and boys basketball, as well.
Mike Gatto, a senior vice president and general manager of Nationwide Arena who has worked with the OHSAA to lease Nationwide Arena and Ohio State facilities, said the priority this year will be on holding safe competitions for teams while continuing to use the Schottenstein Center as a distributing center for the coronavirus vaccine.
For wrestling specifically, the number of athletes, coaches, family and friends at the Schottenstein Center while vaccinations are being given on the concourse would present an unsafe situation.
“It would be challenging to distance, but we are not comfortable producing an event with any size of a crowd,” Gatto said.
The current state order limits capacity for indoor sports to the lesser number of 15% of venue capacity or 300 people.
During the fall, OHSAA moved the girls volleyball championships from the Nutter Center at Wright State University to Vandalia Butler High School. There, the OHSAA was able to have more spectators than would have been allowed at the Nutter Center.
And playing all games at one location made it easier for television partner Spectrum to broadcast the games into homes of those who couldn’t attend due to restrictions.
“It’s not as easy in some sports such as swimming and diving, or bowling. There are limited facilities,” Ute said. “But in wrestling and basketball, we have an opportunity to take these to alternate venues this year that makes more sense for us from a fiscal standpoint and still gives those kids an opportunity to compete.”
State tournaments for gymnastics, bowling and swimming and diving will all remain at their venues with a few changes to the traditional format, including no preliminary sessions in swimming and diving.