Kentucky high school sports moving forward with delayed start, condensed schedule
Kickoffs for high school sports will have to wait a bit longer this fall as Kentucky tries to get control of a coronavirus pandemic that has seen cases surge in recent weeks.
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association Board of Control voted to delay the start of fall practices and games for football soccer, volleyball, field hockey and other activities at a special meeting held via Zoom on Tuesday and streamed live on the organization’s YouTube channel to more than 7,000 viewers.
Under the approved plan, the first football games would be held Sept. 11 with practices beginning in phases (helmet only, pads, etc.) starting on Aug. 24. The football playoffs and its championship games would move back one week.
Soccer, volleyball, field hockey and cross country can begin limited practice and tryouts on Aug. 24, full practices on Aug. 31, and then games/meets can begin on Sept. 7. Soccer’s postseason will be adjusted in order to preserve more of the regular season with playoffs beginning Oct. 12.
The board also decided competitive cheer and dance can begin on Aug. 24 and strongly recommends those teams hold their activities outdoors.
KHSAA Commissioner Julian Tackett and his staff presented a number of options and recommendations for each sport.
“Obviously, with the uptick of what’s going on in our state, we have to be wise to current events, and yet just like most of you in your school decisions, you’re striking a balance all the time,” Tackett said in remarks prefacing his recommendations to the board about how to move forward. “I think we have heard from a huge portion of the public. And I’ll tell you that the opinions have been running about 9-to-1 in favor of going ahead and doing something. … In the literally hundreds and over 1,000 emails that I’ve gotten — or calls, messages or texts — (are) about the opportunity to participate, even if that opportunity is reduced this year.”
Each of the key votes were recorded with 17 board members in favor, none opposed and one abstention from Jerry Wyman, the director of academics, activities, athletics for Jefferson County public schools.
And each decision is subject to revision as pandemic conditions change. The board will hold another special meeting at 10:30 a.m. Aug. 20 to reassess.
“We have to be ready to pivot at a moment’s notice because of what happens and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We have to be ready to shift based on what (coronavirus) data does,” Tackett said. “We would like to have decisions and make decisions that are perfectly planned, but we have to be flexible.”
Tackett emphasized the importance of following the state’s mask requirement and announced the creation of a new KHSAA logo, which incorporates a mask, to help promote the health initiative.
“No matter what we do today, we have got to get our entire state behind trying to slow down this spread or we’re not going to have sports and we’re not going to have school,” Tackett said.
The move means all games that were scheduled before the new start dates are canceled, but the extra week added by moving back playoffs in football and soccer offers the opportunity for rescheduled games during the new bye week.
The cancellations will have a tremendous effect on some sports with soccer and volleyball losing a number of dates and football losing some of its traditional early-season “bowl” events. In the first week alone, there were 20 sponsored bowls on the calendar. Sponsors mean fundraising money that can be crucial to high school athletics programs.
In soccer, more than half of defending boys’ state champion Henry Clay’s schedule was to occur prior to Sept. 7 — 11 games. In volleyball, the effect is a loss of anywhere from five to a dozen games, including some tournaments. Another part of the KHSAA’s decision Tuesday was to limit out-of-state travel to bordering states and tournament-like events to those with no more than eight teams, which most dramatically affects volleyball in the fall. Paul Laurence Dunbar was scheduled to travel to Arizona for a tournament in October.
The football playoffs would begin Nov. 13 and 14 instead of Nov. 6 and 7 with its championships at Kroger Field being held Dec. 11 and 12 instead of the weekend prior. Soccer’s postseason would begin Oct. 12 with its first three rounds of playoffs condensed to two weeks. Other sports’ playoffs would remain on their normal calendar.
In another important move for some of the larger teams, the KHSAA voted to limit game-day participation to just 60 players in uniform on the sidelines, thereby reducing the number of people who can be there. Sideline congestion is a social distancing concern. For many teams, that will have no effect. For large teams, that will means a lot of players who would have been able to take part in game-day activities will be restricted.
Schools also cannot hold interscholastic scrimmages while pandemic rules are in effect.
On Monday, Gov. Andy Beshear recommended that no public or private school begin in-class instruction until the third week of August. Several school districts, including Lexington’s Fayette County Public Schools, have already decided to begin the fall semester off campus with at-home learning. While that doesn’t necessarily preclude extra-curricular activities, it makes it harder for school officials to justify holding them.
When pushing back the regularly scheduled date for fall practice from July 15 for most sports at its regular meeting earlier this month, the KHSAA targeted Aug. 3 as a potential new official start date. Monday’s announcement by the governor threw that timing into question as well as the scheduled starts of most fall seasons. Football was to commence play on Aug. 21, soccer on Aug. 10, volleyball and cross country on Aug. 17. Only golf, which begins play Friday, will follow its normal calendar because it is among the “low touch” sports deemed reasonably safe by federal and state guidelines.
Since June 15 statewide and since June 29 for Fayette’s public schools, sports teams have been able to hold conditioning and skills training, but they have been prevented from normal summer practice activities that include tryouts and game-like situations, such as scrimmages. Those limitations, which include coaches having a total of six hours with players each week, remain in place through Aug. 23. Beginning Aug. 24 the tryouts and practices can start in earnest with a limit of 7.5 hours total. Beginning Aug. 31 practice restrictions are fully lifted so long as all of the KHSAA’s measures meet state and federal coronavirus guidelines at that time.
Since June 15, a number of teams have seen COVID cases among players and coaches and been shut down for a period. But protocols put in place by the school systems have largely meant only an individual team and sometimes just an effected “pod” within a team has had to quarantine.
The KHSAA made its decision as a number of other athletics associations across the country are making their own. Five states — California, Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington — and the District of Columbia have already decided to push football to a spring season, while neighboring Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri appear to be holding to their original schedules. Tennessee has pushed the start of its fall seasons back a few weeks. In all, 24 state associations have altered their fall calendars, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
In Alabama, two counties have decided on their own to cancel all of their fall sports for at least nine weeks. That decision came on the same day of a coronavirus outbreak on Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins that forced the team to postpone its home opener. All Marlins games have been postponed through Sunday.
The MLB began its season last weekend while Major League Soccer, the National Women’s Soccer League and the United Soccer League have been holding games for the last couple of weeks.
Beshear said Monday that he has been encouraged by how the USL’s Louisville City club has been operating and noted it’s still too early to think about whether the Kentucky Derby’s new Sept. 5 date is in jeopardy. Louisville City has held three games with fans in attendance at the new Lynn Family Stadium. It has kept its capacity to one-third and asked fans to wear face coverings.
“We’ve got a pretty good example in Lynn Family Stadium that says when you put all the restrictions into effect and you enforce it — that’s a really important point-you are out there working it and enforcing it — it appears you can do some of these things safely,” Beshear said.
This story was originally published July 28, 2020 at 12:03 PM.
