Wpial stands tall for fall sports while Philly Pub postpones till Jan 1, 2021: Central Bucks goes online, Milton Hershey postpones and more

Tagged under: District 1, District 12, District 3, District 7, News

Billy Splain | August 10, 2020

Amy Sheuneman at press conference Pic via Chris Harlan, Triblive

Lately it’s been tough to keep up with whats going on with high school fall sports. Last week Governor Wolf dropped a bomb on the season by stating that no sports should be played until January 1, 2021.  The next day the PIAA countered by delaying sports for two weeks to work with state legislators to communicate with Wolf the importance to continue fall sports. 

The trend continued this morning with news flying in from both ends of the state. Starting in western PA, WPIAL Executive Director Amy Scheuneman held a press conference to show the WPIAL is supporting the decision by the PIAA to postpone sports but continue to fight to hold them. “We were hoping to get the message out to schools and let them know we are fighting for them,” Scheuneman said of why they held the news conference. “We’ve heard from a lot of individuals who are begging and pleading. We want to let them know we are trying. We are going to work as hard as we can in the next two weeks with the governor’s office, in accord with the PIAA, to hopefully allow something to happen this fall.”

“We support what the PIAA did to allow more time to get clarification (from the governor),” Scheuneman said. “Without the changing of the language from the governor, or some sort of massaging of the recommendation … at least give us something we can work around.” When asked if they could continue sports even if Wolf makes the recommendation a mandate, Scheuneman said, “I don’t know. The PIAA board could then vote to allow it to go on, based on school decisions. And it might go that way. I couldn’t have guessed the PIAA would vote the way they did based on some conversations we had. But I’m glad that they did. That’s why we wanted to say we support what they did to allow more time to get clarification.”

Meanwhile, things weren’t quite as rosey.  While Sheuneman was lending support to the players, programs and PIAA, in Philadelphia school district athletic director James Lynch was doing the opposite. The Philly pub league cancelled fall sports until January 1, following the recommendations by Wolf.  He sent out an email to the school athletic directors citing “Our PPL Return to Play COVID-19 task force has been meeting on a weekly basis since June to consider all options to return safely to the field of play and through our continued discussions we recognized the many challenges — both from a health and safety standpoint and logistical barriers — that putting on a season will entail. With the Governor’s Office, the Department of Health and the Department of Education jointly releasing strong recommendations last week, we felt we needed to act to put the health and safety of our student athletes, coaches and staff as our top priority.”

Philadelphia announced earlier this month it would start classes fully online. Lynch noted that “Public League officials will work with PIAA to develop alternate schedules in an effort to stage fall sports after the new year” though we are unsure at this time what that would mean if the PIAA is successful at retaining fall sports. That would put the Public League on an island of it’s own.

While all this was going on, the Central Bucks School District announced with would forgo it’s scheduled hybrid return to sports and go all online.  Their reasoning was more staffing related: “The COVID-19 pandemic has left many people struggling to find a balance between safely returning to work while maintaining personal health and well-being.  Our faculty and staff are no different than our community in that many of our employees are struggling with countless issues and individual circumstances that prevent them from returning to our schools in person. Once this information was provided to us, we re-examined our proposed school reopening plan and explored each option, navigating possible solutions.”   According to several, no decision has been made to postpone sports any further though in a meeting on Aug 6 they did recommend Football have a four-week delay from the first regular season contest date. This recommendation is now being considered by each school’s respective administration.

AND while all this was happening, Milton-Hershey became the first Mid-Penn league school to postpone fall sports. During the mornings District 3 meeting, Lower Dauphin athletic director Dave Bitting, a Mid-Penn Board of Directors member, shared that news.

And if it weren’t a crazy enough morning, Central Dauphin school district released a statement that their programs were suspended due to a covid-19 situation. In a released statement, District Superintendent Norm Miller said: “Several Central Dauphin High School student athletes have been exposed to persons with COVID-19 and, as a result, have received positive tests. In addition, numerous athletes have been present at community events as well as conditioning and practices. As a result, the District is implementing the Central Dauphin School District Athletic Health and Safety Plan. For the next week, all scheduled team workouts and gatherings have been cancelled for all sports.
This is being done in order to avoid further community spread among both students and athletes whose health and welfare must be the District’s primary and only concern. Safety measures, including thorough disinfection of equipment and areas used by all teams, are being taken.”

Stay tuned to PAFootballNews.com for any further developments.

Follow PA Football News on Twitter @PaFootballNews