Delay official on fall sports with no football games until Oct. 2
By a unanimous 18-0 vote during an online meeting, the principals of Eastern Pennsylvania Conference schools voted on Tuesday to delay the start of contact fall sports, including football, for about a month.
The first EPC football games will be played Oct. 2 — which would have been the sixth play date for most teams — while soccer, field hockey and volleyball will begin one week earlier, on Sept. 25.
Noncontact sports such as tennis, cross country and golf will begin on time, with golf starting on Aug, 20, tennis on Aug. 24, and cross country on Sept. 4.
EPC contests will be scheduled only within the same county, with Lehigh County schools (Allen, Central Catholic, Dieruff, Emmaus, Parkland and Whitehall) playing each other, and Northampton County schools (Bethlehem Catholic, Easton, Freedom, Liberty, Nazareth and Northampton) doing the same.
The Monroe/Pike county schools (East Stroudsburg North and South, Pocono Mountain East and West, Pleasant Valley and Stroudsburg) will also play each other.
Football will have just a five-game league schedule through October, allowing for District 11 playoffs to begin in November or for teams to play additional games in November if they didn’t qualify for districts.
The Allentown School District voted in favor of the delayed start proposal, but the district also wanted it on the record that its high schools, Allen and Dieruff, were not yet committing to playing fall sports.
“We’re supporting the delay to give us more time to assess what’s in the best interest of the students of Allentown
and the district at large,” said Dieruff principal Mike Makhoul. “We just wanted that to be part of the record.”
Liberty athletic director and EPC vice president Fred Harris said that while the EPC sets the schedule for league play “it’s up to each school to lay out its return-to-practice plan and everybody’s is going to look a little different because everybody is in a different situation. So, the practice schedule at Whitehall might be a little different than [Bethlehem schools].”
The PIAA generally mandates 15 days of practice before games can begin. The heat acclimatization period for football teams is scheduled to start Monday.
Harris said the sport-bysport schedules will be finalized and released in the next week.
“Everybody will get a chance to mull them over, but we’ll be primarily staying in county with some exceptions because some schools don’t have a full complement of teams in each sport and obviously, if a district like Allentown opts out, we’ll have to tweak those schedules again.” Harris said.
The league put out a news release after the meeting saying the EPC schedule will feature five cross country meets, 10 field hockey, girls and boys soccer, tennis, golf competitions (home and away within the same division) and 11 volleyball matches.
The volleyball teams got an additional date because they have a 22-competition regular season and, to be eligible for districts, schools must participate in at least half of their allotted competitions in their sport.
“In girls volleyball, we’ll play through the division twice and then we’ll seed the six teams, and No. 1 will play No. 6, No. 2 will play No. 5 and No. 3 will play No. 4 to determine that 11th match,” Harris said.
No conference tournaments will be held and no conference championships will be crowned, but divisional champs will be recognized.
“We were hammering this thing out for weeks,” Harris said. “There were definitely a lot of different thoughts, opinions, proposals. I would say we had six or seven different proposals. But once we came together, our principals and superintendents provided some great insight.”
While it might not be what many fall sports athletes
“We’ve come up with a plan that will best suit our kids.” — Chuck Dailey
wanted, EPC officials are hoping that a delay buys them time to get in league play at a time when Gov. Tom Wolf still has restrictions in place and schools are figuring out how their school days will look once they open in the next month.
“Ultimately what this does is, it gives us a chance to play,” Harris said. “It gives our schools a chance to open with a tiered delay and hopefully we can do that as safely as possible and get some semblance of a sports season in for our kids. That was the driving force.”
Former East Stroudsburg North football coach and current athletic director Chuck Dailey called it a proud moment for the league.
“In light of the situation, this shows the courage of our leadership from our administrators and school boards right down to each and every athletic director to step up and come together during this pandemic,” said Dailey, who is also the EPC secretary. “We’ve come up with a plan that will best suit our kids. To come together 18-0 speaks volumes. It’s one of our proudest moments.”
Whitehall principal and league president Nate Davidson, who was a member of Allentown Central Catholic’s 1993 state championship football team, acknowledged that coaches, athletes, parents and others are going to be disappointed by the delay.
“Of course, we would prefer a full schedule and have our kids out there competing on Day 1 under the Friday night lights,” he said. “That’s what we would have done in a normal environment just like any other year. But obviously, this is not a normal environment.
“As principals, as superintendents, you know we’re disappointed we can’t start seasons as we normally do,” Davidson said. “But we’re charged with maintaining safety for kids, coaches and schools as our No. 1 priority and that’s where this decision came from. We felt a tiered rollout was the most appropriate way to do this in a safe manner.”
The Colonial League is expected to meet on Thursday, and so far, there has been no indication that a delay is being considered.
Other leagues such as WPIAL in the Pittsburgh area and the Mid-Penn Conference have also announced delays, but not as extensive as the EPC.
Dailey said the EPC hasn’t consulted with anyone else in going forward with its decision.
“We’ve just been looking to take care of ourselves and haven’t discussed anything with any of the other conferences,” he said.
If the Colonial League begins its fall sports programs on time — particularly its football season in a newly configured alignment with the Schuylkill League — and the EPC players are sitting and watching, there could be potential backlash. If they opt to play, the Colonial and Schuylkill teams could have the local sports stage all to themselves through most of September.
Davidson said the EPC can handle the criticism.
“Any decision we would make in this realm would open us up to some level of criticism,” he said. “It’s not the normal path and it’s a change and people don’t always support changes. However, we made a decision as a conference with the information and data we have to do what we felt like was best to provide a safe environment for our kids and still participate and compete. Other areas of the state and other leagues have to do what’s in their best interest. But we felt we did what’s best for our kids today.”