Early in April, Section III released its 2020 football schedule, which included, for many of the area’s large schools, nine regular-season football games, two more than what most teams had done in recent decades.

Now this expansion has official blessing – as long as the fall sports season takes place as planned.

During its May 27 meeting, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association’s executive committee unanimously approved a proposal where football teams can schedule up to 10 games independent of sectional championships.

What that means for Section III is that schools that want to hold games on the first weekend of September instead of scrimmages can do so. Practices are scheduled to get underway Aug. 24.

Section III’s nine Class AA schools  Cicero-North Syracuse, Liverpool, Baldwinsville, West Genesee, Corcoran, Henninger, Nottingham, Rome Free Academy and Utica Proctor – have games set for that first weekend of September. Schools in other classes have mostly decided, for now, to open the weekend of Sept. 11-12, though that could change.

NYSPHSAA’s executive committee also had to deal with a wide range of issues at this meeting, held via teleconference, and most of the decisions had to do with upcoming state championships.

Each of the winter and spring season championships canceled by the COVID-19 outbreak had their contracts extended by one year, including a pair of them set for Central New York.

Now the state boys and girls bowling championships will take place at Mattydale’s Strike-N-Spare Lanes from 2021 to 2023, and the same timeframe applies to the state girls lacrosse championships, which remain at SUNY-Cortland.

The state’s outdoor track and field championships set for Cicero-North Syracuse’s Bragman Stadium moved to 2024 as boys basketball, which was set to return to Glens Falls’ Cool Insuring Arena, will now do so in 2021 and stay there for three years.

Meanwhile, the task force NYSPHSAA established to put together a plan to bring high school sports back in the fall adjusting to COVID-19 changes meets for the first time on June 10. Jamesville-DeWitt High School principal Paul Gasparini is on that committee as Section III’s lone representative.

In a related note, NYSPHSAA executive director Dr. Robert Zayas announced that the state’s Department of Education will not require that students get a physical prior to the start of any sports season in 2020-21 so long as those students had taken previous physicals the last two school years and could provide medical information.