In a fluid high school sports landscape, San Jacinto football coach Aric Galliano can find a silver lining if competition doesn’t start until January.
“Well, it would be a lot cooler for us,” Galliano said, comparing the difference between a normal summer football season ramp-up in August, and one potentially in December. “I would welcome that.”
Weather worries aside, CIF announcements are expected Monday that will outline changes to the 2020-2021 sports schedule. Nothing is yet official, but most coaches and officials expect the fall season, including football and girls volleyball, to be pushed back to January due to fears over the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The CIF State will make an announcement at 9 a.m., followed by a more detailed announcement by the Southern Section at 1 p.m.
All three high school sports seasons — fall, winter and spring — could be contested in a shortened sports year between January and June of 2021. The hope is that by January, either a vaccine is developed, or case numbers dwindle enough that competition is safe.
Some football programs started summer conditioning. Some started and stopped. In San Jacinto, where Galliano said the district was planning to start school in August with both in-class and distance options, football was not cleared to practice.
“I’m kind of giving them their time to get hungry,” said Galliano, who said he hasn’t done many Zoom conferences to meet with players. “I think when we do get that call, they’re going to be all-in.”
It is a question football teams state-wide are trying to answer as each district differs in its approach to the school year. Many plan to open by giving students the option of distance learning. There are also hybrid plans that include in-class and distance options. On Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom mandated that schools cannot have in-class learning in counties as long they remain on the state’s watch list.
Athletically, Galliano wondered what this means for those elite football players who want to graduate early and get to their colleges by spring.
“If they push the NCAA (season) back to January, will the NCAA still allow those kids to early enroll?” he asked.
Overall programs that may be affected most would be small schools, which rely on multiple-sport athletes. A condensed sports year might cause seasons such as football and basketball to further overlap, not to mention more complicated scheduling.
“It will be a bigger hardship on small schools, I believe,” Aquinas athletic director Chris Ybarra said. “In all the years I’ve been AD, we’ve always had to live with that multiple-sport athlete compared to the big schools.
“It will be interesting to see what happens.”
And it’s not just football. There’s some opinion that cross country, girls golf and girls tennis could compete with their normal schedule in the fall, as those are outdoor sports that feature more individual competition.
Yet cross country was dealt a blow Thursday when the season-ending Nike Cross Nationals meet in December — the sport’s de facto high school national championship in Portland, Ore. — was canceled.
Great Oak teams have twice been runners-up and the boys won a national title there in 2015.
At this point, Great Oak coach Doug Soles just wants a decision.
“All you’ve got to do for any coach is give us guidelines,” Soles said. “We need the rules, so we can formulate the plan.”
Whenever the high school sports season starts, normalcy for student-athletes who haven’t been in school or officially participating in a sport since March will be welcome relief.
“My kids are lost right now,” Soles said. “The kids don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing.”