The IHSA held ANOTHER highly anticipated regularly scheduled board meeting yesterday morning. It was hoped that there would finally be some clarity regarding the high school sports schedule following the virtual meeting. With the state currently in Tier 3 mitigations from the COVID-19 pandemic, officials from the IHSA said it might be at least another two weeks, at best, before any information would be able to be shared with school districts regarding a restart of high school sports.
Following yesterday’s meeting, the IHSA Board of Directors announced that all IHSA sports not operating under an official IHSA season calendar may begin to conduct contact days as soon as they are allowable per Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) mitigations and local school guidance. IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson said in a press release, “The IHSA acknowledges the immense mental, emotional, and physical strain that a lack of contact with school programs is causing Illinois high school student-athletes. It is our intention that these contact days provide sport-specific training safely under the leadership of high school coaches. We realize there is a desire for finality on a sports schedule for 2020-21, however, we did not believe it would be prudent to lock ourselves into a schedule at a time when IHSA schools are unable to conduct any sports. Per Governor Pritzker, we have hope that low-risk sports may be permitted in certain regions of the state as early as this Friday (January 15). With that in mind, February seems like a realistic timeline to have sports resume statewide. We expect that the events of the next two weeks will go a long way toward informing our opinion on which scheduling option we decide to proceed with.”
Anderson went on to say that if no sports have resumed by February, season lengths could be impacted and the likelihood of high-risk sports being played at all. The Board also said that once state leadership allows for low-risk winter sports, such as Boys & Girls Bowling, Cheerleading, Dance and Boys Swimming & Diving, to begin participation, those teams will be allowed to begin practice immediately and then continue their season through the season calendar established by the Board later this month.
The IHSA Board of Directors have scheduled a special meeting on January 27th and planned to make some hard decisions at that meeting.
