As the clock continues to tick toward Aug. 17, when practice for Delaware’s high school fall sports begins, an intriguing possibility that could dramatically change the state’s athletic calendar is being raised.
Due to COVID-19, could Delaware’s high school football season be moved to the spring?
Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association board member Ted Laws raised the issue at the body’s monthly meeting on June 11. And while it received little discussion then, it may zoom to the forefront within the next two months if the decision is made that high school football is too risky to be played this fall.
“I know some people are looking at that around the country,” said Cape Henlopen athletic director Bob Cilento, a DIAA board member. “I don’t know of anybody that has done it yet.”
No state has canceled high school football for this fall yet. But as the coronavirus shows no sign of slowing down, school administrators, athletic officials and state governments across the country will soon face some difficult decisions.
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Delaware athletic directors and coaches say moving football to the spring wouldn’t be easy. There’s a good reason that the three-season high school sports calendar is the way it is now – because everything fits together. Moving one sport could have a domino effect and prompt other sports to shift seasons.
“From the coaching perspective, if that gives us football, I’ll take it in the spring. Absolutely,” said Dave Collins, who serves as athletic director at Hodgson and offensive coordinator on the school’s football team. “From the A.D. side of it, we’d have to move some sports around.
“We couldn’t just say, ‘Hey, we’re going to keep all the spring sports the same and add football to it.’ Now you’re really limiting some of your multi-sport athletes.”
Spring is the busiest season in Delaware high school sports. Eight sports are contested in the spring, compared to five each in the fall and winter.
At Hodgson, Collins said varsity football and baseball use the same locker room. The Silver Eagles’ football practice field in the fall becomes the girls lacrosse game field in the spring. Boys lacrosse and freshman football also use the same locker room.
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“I know Hodgson wouldn’t be the only school to have issues like that,” Collins said. “I’ve talked to some other ADs, and they would be in the same boat facility-wise. If football goes to spring, we would find a way to make it work if we could move a couple of sports to the fall.”
Football, field hockey, cross country, volleyball and boys soccer are currently contested in the fall. Wrestling, swimming, indoor track and boys and girls basketball are played in the winter. Baseball, golf, boys and girls lacrosse, track and field, tennis, girls soccer and softball are played in the spring.
Moving any of the spring sports to the fall to make way for football in the spring would be complicated. Schedules would have to be redone from scratch. Facilities for different sports would have to be secured. Coaches and officials would have to be willing and able to participate in their sport at a different time of year. And athletes used to playing two or three sports over the course of a school year may have to choose if two of their sports are being played in the same season.
That’s why St. Georges football coach John Wilson, president of the Delaware Interscholastic Football Coaches Association, would like to see DIAA take up the issue soon and decide whether any sports will be moved.
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“I would rather have spring football than no football. That’s for sure,” Wilson said. “They need to say, ‘By Aug. 1, we’ve got to make a decision here. I just think they’ve got to be proactive here and decide what it is. It would require some ADs to do some work.”
Matt Sabol, athletic director and football coach at William Penn, would like to see a spring sport moved to fall if football is pushed to the spring.
“If you say the only way we can play is in the spring, I say we play in the spring,” Sabol said. “But if you’re competing with lacrosse, track and baseball, kids are going to be missing out on some of the things you don’t want them to miss out on.
“You would hope that one sport gets flipped with football. I think track would be the easiest one, because it’s the lowest-risk sport at this point.”
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Track and field would be safer than football during a pandemic, but moving that sport up to the fall would put it in direct competition with cross country.
Baseball could be a logical candidate to move to the fall, since most high school players compete on summer teams and would be ready to go if the sport started in late August or early September.
But most Delaware high school baseball fields aren’t lighted, so the sport would likely have just seven or eight weeks to finish – or at least be deep into the playoffs – when the clock switches back to standard time on Nov. 1 and an hour of daylight is lost.
There are no easy, seamless answers.
“There would have to be some give and take,” Cilento said.
Following Delaware’s traditional sports calendar, if football was moved to the spring, practice would likely begin on March 1. The 10-week regular season would begin on the March 19-20 weekend and end on the May 21-22 weekend. Three weeks of playoffs would conclude with the Division I and II championship games on the June 11-12 weekend.
But none of that has even been discussed by the DIAA board yet. And moving football to the spring wouldn’t guaranteed that football is played next spring. It would only buy time for life to return to the “old normal” by March.
“I think at this point, anybody would take a modified sports season,” Collins said. “That, to me, is better than no sports season.”
Sabol saw the impact of that as he attended William Penn’s drive-through graduation ceremony on Thursday.
“You see some of the baseball players, and you say, ‘I’m sorry you had to miss your senior year of baseball,’” Sabol said. “You feel terrible for those guys, and you don’t want to say that to anybody else next year. You don’t want your senior football players to miss their season.”
Contact Brad Myers at bmyers@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @BradMyersTNJ
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