Football to play from late Feb. to April
Published August 19, 2020
By DAN PAWLOWSKI
The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association’s Board of Directors held a virtual meeting this morning. The board listened to a presentation from the MIAA COVID-19 Task Force who recommend a revised athletic calendar for the 2020-21 season.
The MIAA made their decisions based on the task force’s recommendations in addition to guidelines from the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). The EEA guidelines were released last week while the DESE guidelines were sent to school administrators last night.
The MIAA voted to push the start date of the fall season to Sept. 18 this morning.
The revised season schedule is: Sept. 18-Nov. 20: fall sports, Nov. 20-Feb. 21: winter sports, Feb. 22-April 25: fall sports II (football, cheer, unified basketball), April 26-July 3: spring sports.
The task force has organized sports that they feel will be safe to play from Sept. 18 to Nov. 20 for the fall season. Those sports include boys’ and girls’ soccer, fall gymnastics, boys’ and girls’ cross country, field hockey, girls’ volleyball, swimming and diving and golf.
Typical fall sports such as football, fall cheerleading and unified basketball are scheduled for Feb. 22 to April 25, but they may be allowed to practice sooner. That decision is up to individual schools.
The task force recommended that schools have the ability to adjust dates with the approval of their District Athletic Committee which would allow flexibility if certain schools can’t play sports right away or have to postpone a season at some point. Also, out of season coaching restrictions were being debated as of press time.
As of press time, the board voted to encourage schools to create a fall schedule within leagues or geographic regions.
The board also voted that there will be no fall MIAA sponsored tournaments. Districts/leagues can host their own.
Sport committees will be tasked with coming up with the modifications to fit the EEA guidelines.
According to the DESE report, “the MIAA will develop sport-specific modifications to meet the guidance from EEA for issuance prior to the start of each season.”
The EEA guidelines, which applies to K-12 school and other youth sports activities, categorized sports into three levels of COVID-19 transmission risk based on the amount of close contact required or expected with different limitations for each.
The lower risk sports that appear in the task force’s recommended fall schedule include swimming, cross country, gymnastics and golf.
Soccer, field hockey and volleyball are in the moderate risk category which require modifications to get to Levels 2 and 3 which are competitive practices and competitions. The DESE report stated that both low and moderate risk sports can be played in the fall, “provided that the MIAA’s recommended sport-specific modifications meet the standards outlined in the EEA guidance.”
High risk winter and spring sports such as basketball, hockey, wrestling and boys’ lacrosse will continue to be evaluated throughout the year.
Participation for school districts planning on only remote learning will be based on their town or city’s average daily cases per 100,000 resident designation from the Department of Public Health. Districts in municipalities designated as “red” must postpone their entire fall season, including practices, until the floating season of Feb. 22 to April 25. There are currently no Middlesex League schools in any red or yellow designations. Lynn, Saugus, Revere and Chelsea are some nearby communities that are currently in the red.
The MIAA will develop a timeline for looking at data prior to the start of each season to determine which color-coded designation a district should fall into for the purposes of playing sports.
Any remote-only school districts with non-red designations have the option to play sports in the fall or delay their season to the floating season.
With these modified schedules receiving approval from the state, it is likely that the MIAA’s board of directors will vote to move forward with this schedule.