PIAA Executive Director Bob Lombardi has a message for everyone…..
Tagged under: News
Billy Splain | July 10, 2020
“Everyone needs to take a step back, take a deep breath and calm down.” That was Dr. Lombardi’s message to Coaches, Athletics Directors, parents, fans, social media surfers, players and anyone else worrying about the upcoming season and what is about to happen.
With the Ivy league cancelling their season, along with the Centennial conference and several other college leagues such as the Big Ten going to modified schedules due to the difficulties presented by the covid 19 pandemic, it seems the entire PA high school sports world went into panic mode. Hope is there though,. In West Virginia, WVSSAC Executive Director Bernie Dolan made the announcement alongside WV Governor Jim Justice that the start of the 2020 high school football season has been delayed by just one week. Games are now allowed to be played starting on September 3. In the east, New Jersey moved their season back to October 2. Lombardi says what happens with college sports will have no influences on their decision as college teams have far more complexities to worry about.
Rumors like “they are cancelling the football season on July 15, they cancelled Hershey state championships, they are talking about spring football to suggestions such as “we should flip the spring and fall sport seasons” blew up social media sites.
Another thing that has people wondering what is to come is seeing big time states like Texas, where they “say” football is king (we disagree) talk about moving their sport to January and New Mexico shelving their season until January. Of course these are warm weather states and that would make it easier to hold their seasons in the middle of the winter, something that Lombardi says wouldn’t be good around Pennsylvania.
“Hey, we’re talking about, I think you’re setting kids set up for an overuse problem, especially in a sport that you start out in mediocre weather and go into good weather, these sports like baseball and softball are not built to start in halfway decent weather and then go into bad weather. You could be looking at the last three weeks of October being very cold and these kids have just thrown for six months, do you want them throwing in the cold after throwing for six months?”
Then you have the other sports to consider like track, then you get into a whole new set of issues. “There’s another huge problem that nobody’s even talking about is site availability” said Lombardi.”A lot of our sports use college fields and tracks and we just simply don’t know if they would be available and quite frankly we don’t know if a college would even want us to come to their field’s, just too many unknowns.”
Another thing that was mentioned was the absolute uncertainty of the whole situation. “And then even further the fall doesn’t go and we flip seasons those sports lose another season. Is that fair to them? No it’s not. That’s an equitable” said Lombardi. “We don’t even know if winter and spring sports will happen. We’re taking this one day at a time. It may go the other way and things get better, we just don’t know.” Then you have the issue that, if, say baseball moves to the fall, the season gets cancelled, they don’t see the field again until the spring of 2022. That’s just not something the PIAA wants to even think about.
But in PA, it’s football that holds the top spot for conversation. Moving football to the spring presents even more challenges. “First, the NFHS and the PIAA Sports Medicine department more than likely won’t allow it. It’s just too much to ask kids to maybe go April/May, an 8 week season, then in 10 weeks come back. Football is a collision sport and it takes time for the body to heal.” Lombardi then addressed some other issues. “You also have to think about the kids that just signed with colleges. Many of them aren’t even allowed to participate in all star games. Do we really think they’d want them to participate in a full, head on 8 week season that ends two weeks before they’re to report to their respective colleges?”
The PIAA board will meet on Wednesday, July 15. At that meeting, several discussions will begin that the board hasn’t even talked about yet. Many of those items are the basis for the rumors running rampant through social media right now. One of them is “what will football look like, what if we have to postpone?” Dr. Lombardi says they’re taking it week by week. “Look, right now, you’re all working out. On August 10, you will start heat acclimation, and on August 17, you’ll begin your first practice. That’s where we are right now. We’ll discuss what shortening a season looks like, our plan is to just keep pushing back week by week if we have to. If we have to we’ll go all the way to the first week of October.” If at that point it looks like the season can’t go, Lombardi said at that point they’ll begin a conversation about what to do with football and fall sports next.
If the season is halted, PFN owner Billy Splain already has plans in the works for several “senior combines” all over the state in conjunction with Ron Johnson and the PSFCA as part of the new “Front Line Recruiting Initiative”. But even those are in question as we have no idea what the recruiting calendar will look like. Remember, if the D1 schools are playing their season, then recruiting is on their “to do” list in the fall.
When asked about what the PIAA has in plans for testing and what would happen if a player or team had someone that tested positive or got sick and tested positive Lombardi said those are some of the questions they’re going to start posing to each other at their meeting on Wednesday night. “We’re going to take a look at Iowa who is playing their baseball season right now and they have a couple of models. We are watching to see how that works for them. We’ve already had interruptions and we need to have some discussion up around 30,000 feet on how we’re going to handle disruptions.”
As for testing players for Covid 19, “We can’t mandate schools to test for the coronavirus, we can just request them to look into it. It would be up to the individual schools” said Lombardi. “Tell them all, take a nice, deep breath. We’re doing everything we can to get fall sports in, during the fall.”
In Iowa, the social distancing rules were designed to ease burdens that strict rules made difficult. For example, dugouts are allowed to be used, but players are asked to spread out as much as possible while in them. Only players, coaches, trainers and umpires are allowed on the field of play, which includes the dugout area. Coaches should consider social distancing when interacting with anyone on the field of play, whether it’s a player or umpire. Normal lineup exchange can take place before games, but there will be no handshake lines after games. For more on the Iowa model: https://www.desmoinesregister.com They’ve already had several teams seasons come to an abrupt end when players have been exposed to Covid 19. https://www.iowapublicradio.org
Some of those tips answer questions many have had such as the mask always policy just passed by the PA Government which states players must either be social distancing or wear a mask on the sideline. The PIAA will talk with the Governors office to clarify issues like these because it simply isn’t feasible or practical to have a kid play, come off the field, put on a mask only to take it off two plays later to reenter the game. Standing six feet apart won’t work in many cases either. If you have 50 kids on your team, and a sideline that’s tight, you’re endzone to endzone. So the PIAA will continue to seek an audience with the state to modify and hopefully ease some restrictions.
Other happenings in the HS sports world around the country:
TSSAA (Tennessee). Many want to know what were all of the limitations for our Governor’s mandate of extending the State of Emergency order through August 29. Within the wording of this order, football and girls soccer WILL NOT BEGIN their seasons as originally scheduled. TSSAA has also requested from the governor the option of starting on time .Another words giving high schools the same exemption as he has given college and NFL
in Illinois. They are allowed 20 days in the summer starting July 5th.
North Dakota Governor and State Supt of Public Instruction will be coming out with guidelines July 15 on what fall schooling and activities will look like. A lot of speculation as to what it will look like. Currently, ND is playing summer baseball and I’ve seen there has been a few organized summer league basketball tournaments taking place.
In Washington State the WIAA pushed back the start date of practices in the fall to September 5th for football and September 7th for all other sports. The WIAA is meeting again on July 22nd to either go with or alter that plan. The WIAA is working closely with the Governors office on regulations, guidelines, etc. There are various plans on the table from starting on September 5th with a full season to having Fall Sports in January (12 week season), Winter Sports in at the end of February (12 week season) and Spring Sports at the end of April (12 week season). There would be overlap between seasons, but would get in all three seasons. Also switching Fall and Winter sports in that model was discussed due to playing outside in possible snow, bad weather, etc. Lots of moving parts here in Washington State.
Connecticut is currently in Phase II with Phase III being pushed back 3 weeks. We can know do
outdoor conditioning with 10 players and 1 coach present. Makes for long days trying to get 50 kids
through conditioning. Now that the Ivy League has cancelled all fall sports this may be the start of trend in the Northeast.
Michigan: MHSAA is still committed to having fall sports staying in the fall and having three sport seasons. They are, however, making contingency plans, in case things change, like they do daily!
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