BACKUP PLAN
Group has developed plan to deal with interruptions if need be
The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association plans to play football and all fall sports in the coming months, but moving those activities to the spring remains a possibility
As the high school sports season begins to ramp up, questions remain on whether sports will go on this fall.
The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association plans to play football and all fall sports in the coming months, but moving t hose activities to the spring remains a possibility, Executive Director David Jackson told The Oklahoman on Friday.
“It is doable, especially if we get news that doing anything in the fall isn't a good idea, then we' re looking at developing a plan to play our fall activities in the spring,” Jackson said.
Practices for cross country, fall baseball, fastpitch softball and volleyball are set to begin Wednesday, and those will go on with the schedule as is, Jackson said. The plan remains to begin football practice on Aug. 10.
However, Jackson said the OSSAA has spent most of its time recently developing contingency plans to prepare for possible interruptions to the fall schedule.
“We want to have our activities in some form this year,” Jackson said. “That may mean our activities are shortened or we may delay the beginning of the fall activities. We may not play district games in some of our activities. Lots of different scenarios that we're trying to put together to be able to provide our activities in the safest
manner we can.
“We're going to give every effort to providing the activities in some form.”
On Thursday, New Mexico's high school athletics association voted to move football and soccer to the spring.
For Oklahoma, Jackson said if fall activities were moved from the spring, there's not an exact timeline of when seasons would occur. Games could be played as early as January and as late as May.
“That is something we are considering and trying to develop a plan to be ready for that,” Jackson said.
The OSSAA has not been tracking which Oklahoma school districts have had to halt workouts because of positive COVID-19 cases, but many of those schools have reached out to the OSSAA to let them know why they decided to shut down temporarily.
Jackson said there's not a blueprint for what will force the OSSAA to postpone fall sports or make teams stop playing for a period of time. He said if numerous districts halt play and determine it's not safe to play, then the association would decide whether it could safely host a playoff series or have to postpone the events.
“So if those things happen, absolutely we're going to try to have contingency plans ready to do something different when those type of interrupt ions occur,” Jackson said.
“But to say we have an absolute threshold to cancel all of our activities, there's not that absolute something there.”
The OS SA A is remaining positive about hosting all sports and contesting championships this fall while finding new ways to make contests safer now and in the future.
The situation remains fluid, but the OSSAA has plans for nearly every scenario it could face this fall.
For now, all fall sports are continuing on schedule.