Our neighbors to the north will start on time with all fall season high school sports and activities. This comes after the North Dakota High School Activities Association board of directors voted unanimously on Thursday for everything to start as scheduled.
“With member schools having the option to provide in-person education for students, the NDHSAA believes it is important those schools also have the option to return to physical activity and competition,” NDHSAA Executive Director Matt Fetsch said. “Everyone's health and safety is paramount in moving forward with activities and it will not come without disruption, however, providing these opportunities is essential to the physical and mental well-being of high school students.”
Each individual school district in North Dakota will still have the option to sponsor sports and activities or not. The action by the NDHSAA simply gives its member schools the option for sports and activities to exist if they so wish to participate.
A twenty-person task force has been put together in South Dakota to discuss safety guidelines and procedures for the upcoming year. The South Dakota High School Activities Association is expected to hold a board of directors meeting at the end of July to decide what to do moving forward.
In an interview with the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, SDHSAA Executive Director Dan Swartos said “obviously, the very largest question we have to answer is, ‘Is it safe to do this?’ That’s something we’ll have to monitor continuously until we get a vaccination. It’s not a question that we have an answer to right now. We have to see what happens in the next (few) weeks and move forward from there.”
Back in May, the National Federation of High School Associations released its guidance for the 2020-21 school year. They agreed to allow each individual state to determine if they wanted to have a sports and activities season, but they did label out different sports based on risk of virus transmission.
For instance in the fall, football and competitive cheer and dance are high risk sports, because of the close and direct contact that athletes have with one another on a regular basis. Moderate risk sports for the fall would include volleyball, soccer, and tennis, while cross country and golf would fall in the low risk category.
The SDHSAA Covid-19 task force, who is studying all of the scenarios in South Dakota, meets every week. If the SDHSAA board does end up giving approval for sports to start, they’d begin already with organized practices in early August.
