BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - The start of the high school winter sports season has been put on hold.
Governor Phil Scott making the announcement Tuesday that the winter sports season is being delayed ‘until further notice’. Practices were set to begin on November 30th, although games were not allowed prior to January 11th, so there is still time to restart practices and not missed the scheduled start of the season.
The governor said the decision will be evaluated on a weekly basis and said it was his hope adults will realize the need to sacrifice in the effort to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the state, thus allowing activities such as high school sports to continue.
That was the case in the fall. As the coronavirus numbers remained low, a modified high school season was able to be held.
Last March, the start of the pandemic cut short the end of the high school girls basketball playoffs and ultimately the entire spring season was canceled as well.
CVU athletic director Dan Shepardson knows that, although they will be disappointed by this announcement, the winter sports athletes at his school, including the girls hoop team that lost out on a chance at an unbeaten season, will be ready to go when they get the green light.
“Many of our kids played sports in the fall as well. Obviously not all of them, but we had a lot of kids that did it all fall or watched their friends do it all fall, and had a season.”, said Shepardson. “I guarantee you the girls basketball team is going to be 100% on board and I think all the other teams will be as well, because they don’t want to see last spring replicated here. They want to have a season and they want to have a championship season. We were able to do in the fall and we just have to get back to doing what we were doing, what everybody was doing around the state, so we can have it in the spring.”
No matter when the winter season is allowed to begin, the end of the season will likely be pushed back. The Vermont Principals’ Association is open to moving the playoffs for winter sports back to allow an extension of the regular season.
As an example, CVU’s Shepardson is on the high school basketball committee. This season, the boys basketball season was set to end February 20th, the girls a week later. Shepardson says the committee has asked that the end of the regular season for both be pushed to March 13th, adding two to three extra weeks, with the championships pushed all the way to the final weekend in March.
Jay Nichols, the executive director of the VPA, says there are also discussions of moving the spring season back, everything centered on trying to create ways for student-athletes to experience as full seasons as they can possibly have.
“We’re committed to making sure we have a full spring season, because spring athletes lost their season completely last year.”, says Nichols. “So that’s a facet of all of our thinking, but each of the (winter sports) committees will look at that and they’ll decide. Everything will go back essentially a couple of weeks and then we could do the same thing in the spring if we need to. It’s an unusual year, 2020. Our goal is to provide as many opportunities as we can for the kids as safe as we can. If that means playing around with the schedules a little bit, then we will do that.”
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November 25, 2020 at 09:04AM
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Start of Vermont HS winter sports season delayed - WCAX
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