by Phil Blackwell
A long summer full of mystery surrounding the fate of high school fall sports in New York State was supposed to clear up in the last full week of August.
Instead, it turned into a roller coaster of hopes raised and dashed as announcements, meetings, letters and directives sent the issue hurtling in multiple directions, further straining the nerves of students and coaches who hoped to get underway in late September.
The whole sequence of events was initiated Aug. 24 when Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that “low-risk” sports such as soccer, field hockey, cross country, swimming, golf and tennis could proceed in full.
Previously, NYSPHSAA had decided to move its start of practices to Sept. 21 while waiting for state guidelines. At the same time, based on recommendations from its COVID-19 Task Force, the association voted to cancel fall sports state championships.
In laying out the initial state guidelines, Cuomo said that practices in higher-risk sports, including football and volleyball, could start on time, but games were not permitted.
Also, while teams could play contests against opponents in its own region, they were not permitted travel outside of the region for contests.
And even with the full green light to restart sports, there will be limits in terms of spectators, with no more than two per athlete at events and indoor capacity kept below 50 percent.
All this served as a backdrop for meetings on Aug. 25 between leaders of the state’s 11 high school sections along with another gathering of NYSPHSAA’s COVID-19 Task Force.
Here, the parameters of a fall schedule began to take shape, though officials continued to stress that getting students back in the classroom, if possible, remained the first priority.
“Our primary goal is to get students back into an academic setting and then work on athletic participation opportunities,” said NYSPHSAA president and task force chairman Paul Harrica.
Things took another turn on Aug. 26 when school superintendents in Section VIII (Nassau County, Long Island) voted to postpone fall sports until sometime early in 2021, though neighboring Suffolk County (Section XI) voted to play in the fall.
After a public backlash from students and parents in Nassau County, those same Section VIII superintendents said later in the week that they were willing to wait until school opened and see how it went, perhaps reversing its earlier decision.
That same day, the New York State Council on School Superintendents sent a letter to Cuomo requesting that all sports get pushed back until Jan. 1.
In the letter, NYSCCS said that all the logistical challenges involved with opening school buildings made all other activities other than those in the classroom difficult to accomplish.
Responding to this on Aug. 27, Cuomo reiterated that school districts and sections did not have an obligation to put on fall sports but had permission to do so.
(The order) means that high school sports must commence,” said Cuomo. “It means it can commence. Can, not must. It’s up to the individual school district.”
That same day, NYSPHSAA executive director Dr. Robert Zayas released the guidelines on interscholastic athletics created by the state’s Department of Health.
Previously, the state association had approved participation for student-athletes even if they were only getting remote instruction so long as they were taking a specific number of approved curriculum courses.
Zayas announced that more meetings would follow among officials in the 11 sections plus another COVID-19 Task Force meeting this week to go through the guidelines and, perhaps, make a final decision on fall sports early this week.
By Friday, Aug. 28, it was clear that no decision was imminent on fall sports by week’s end, and that the talks among all the state’s high school power brokers, NYSPHSAA and otherwise, would continue into September.
NYSPHSAA spokesperson Chris Watson said that the goal remains to start on Sept. 21, but that “we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
