COLUMBUS — The Ohio High School Athletic Association will do its best to accommodate all of its member schools, but interim executive director Bob Goldring acknowledged Wednesday he didn’t know exactly what the landscape of high school sports would look like during the upcoming school year.
Goldring met with state media via conference call Wednesday afternoon and did his best to provide answers to questions that can’t be fully answered because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Tuesday announced he would sign a forthcoming order from the Ohio Department of Health green-lighting the return of contact sports, including football and soccer. DeWine noted the OHSAA would allow schools that already have tabled fall sports to play those seasons in the spring.
The announcement came after several Cuyahoga County administrators signed a petition urging the OHSAA to move soccer and football to spring.
“We do want to try to make a commitment to providing an opportunity for schools to play (fall sports) in the spring … but to say what those details are right now would be very premature,” Goldring said. “As I sit here today, I would say there would not be a tournament option for our schools in the spring for the fall sports.
“The safest thing to say is we are committed to having some type of opportunity for fall sports not competing this fall to compete somehow in the spring. What that looks like is not determined at this point.”
For schools going forward with fall sports, some spread of the virus is inevitable. How those situations are dealt with will be left up to the schools, Goldring said.
“I don’t think (the OHSAA) can be involved with the positive cases and the testing situations,” Goldring said. “That really has to be the school working with the local health department to get that person that shows symptoms in the right place for testing and then them setting in motion, through the local health department, what happens to those who have been exposed to the student. We’re of the mindset that people are serious and understanding enough that they’re not going to try to sneak something by us.
“Odds are high that we’re going to see some positive cases. Odds are high that it’s going to mean some seasons are paused, hopefully not ended. We’re also realistic to understand that the governor has the ability at any time to step in and say, ‘We’ve seen too many cases across the state and so all sports are halted or all contact sports are halted.’ ”
The OHSAA last week announced it had modified the football season, shortening the regular season to six games and, for the first time since the start of the playoff era in 1972, allowing all schools into the postseason. Teams that are eliminated from the playoffs can schedule regular-season games up until Nov. 14.
“Like we do for other team sports, it will be a voting system by the coaches for seeding,” Goldring said. “Somebody could be 6-0 or 5-1 and somebody could be 0-1 and still have the opportunity to compete in our tournaments.”
Goldring said about 80 football-playing schools across the state have paused their season and will either resume later this fall or wait until spring.
“I have staff working on something that would do weekly tracing of sport-by-sport COVID cases and something from our schools that would indicate what sport they are moving forward and participating in.
“Obviously with COVID cases that could change week to week if (a school) would have to pause.”
Fans across the state are still waiting for the governor’s office to offer guidance in terms of spectator attendance. One scenario, Goldring said, is the number of fans allowed to attend a game would be determined as a percentage of the host site’s seating capacity.
“The indication we have is the (number of fans allowed) would be based on the number of permanent seats within the facility,” Goldring said. “Cheerleaders on the sideline and players who aren’t dressed wouldn’t count. Game day personnel and medical staff wouldn’t count.”
Additionally, the OHSAA established guidelines for the number of athletes permitted to dress for each sport. Football teams can dress 60 players, while soccer and field hockey teams can dress 22 players and volleyball teams can dress 15 players.
The governor’s decision to allow high school sports to resume comes after the Big Ten and other college conferences around the country decided to close down fall sports.
“We look at the high school landscape as being different than the college level from the standpoint that our students are within a bubble at their school,” Goldring said. “At the college level, you have athletes coming in from all across the country, some even internationally. They’re going to be mixing with the normal student population that comes from across the country and from international distances as well. You’re going to have students housed in dormitories and those types of things.
“We see our landscape as being different. You can kind of look at is that our kids are in their own little community bubble and they will be competing against other Ohio community bubbles.”
