Monday marked the officially, unofficial start of high school basketball practice around the state, although its certainly not a normal start. The IHSA announced on October 28th that teams can begin practicing, with certain covid-19 mandates in place, on November 16th and start playing games against other schools in their region on November 30th. Last week, the IHSA backtracked, saying teams could begin practicing on the 16th but would be using the Level-1 mitigations from the IDPH All Sports Policy until at least November 19. Those mitigations include no contact practices and training only.
The IHSA board of directors have a special meeting scheduled for Thursday and have formally invited representatives from Governor Pritzker’s Office and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) to attend the meeting. Additionally, the IHSA will also seek representation at the meeting from the Illinois Principals Association (IPA), the Illinois Association of School Administrators (IASA), the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), and a coalition of nearly 200 school superintendents who recently contacted the Governor regarding school sports during the 2020-21 school year.
Monmouth-Roseville athletic director Jeremy Adolphson says as far as the Titan boys and girls basketball teams are concerned, they are going to do whatever they can to be prepared, should they be able to play games at some point this winter.
Governor Pritzker was asked yesterday if he would be participating in Thursday’s IHSA meeting. Sadly, Pritzker responded by saying that he wouldn’t. He went on to say that, “we’ve been pretty clear” about their opinion on winter sports.
