The South Carolina High School League Executive Committee approved Wednesday to push back the start of the fall sports season due to the continued impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
The first day of practice is now scheduled for Aug. 17, with games starting four weeks later.
"This plan provides flexibility," said commissioner Jerome Singleton. "If we find we can't start on the 17th, we can start on the 24th. If we can't start on the 24th, we can start seven days later and we just move everything back in conjunction with our start date."
The proposal passed 14-2.
Singleton said the SCHSL considered as many options as possible, but he kept coming back to flexibility. He said he didn't want to make drastic scheduling changes like rearranging the seasons – he didn't feel comfortable moving fall sports to spring when he can't be certain it will be safer, and he didn't feel comfortable moving spring sports to fall for them to potentially be canceled for the second season in a row.
This current plan prioritizes region play for the fall sports that use region standings to determine playoff seeding – football, girls' tennis and volleyball. In those cases, the proposal offers that region games will be played first in order to set the standings for playoffs, with the option for non-region games after that. Each fall sport will be able to have two scrimmages and a jamboree.
The SCHSL's three-hour meeting and Singleton's press conference that followed were largely football-based, and he said talks about the winter and spring seasons will take place at later meetings.
Later Wednesday evening, the league released its proposed fall sports season calendar. Girls' tennis, volleyball, swimming, girls' golf and cross country are all slated to begin competition Aug. 31, and competitive cheer has its first contest set for Sept. 12.
In the case of football, the first game of the season would be Sept. 11. Teams are allowed up to seven games, and the targeted date for the regular season finale is Oct. 23. Playoffs would start the following Friday, with four rounds, and state championship games would be played Nov. 20 – that still leaves two weeks of flexibility, as the fall sports season traditionally concludes the first week of December.
Football teams that don't make the playoffs will have the option to play an additional game against another non-playoff team.
Whether or not there will be fans allowed at games is another moving target – Singleton said S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster's spectator ban remains in place and that each school district could determine how many fans could attend should that ban be lifted.
Singleton said the SCHSL will evaluate later what its response would be if a student-athlete tests positive for COVID-19 during the season. He said that, of the 155 athletic directors he sent a survey, 19 responded that they had at least one student-athlete test positive.
His press conference occurred shortly after McMaster called on school districts to provide five-day, in-person learning this fall. While there is an option for virtual learning, Singleton said all that matters to the SCHSL is that the individual is a student at the school – virtual learners will still be eligible to compete.
Two other proposals were shot down Wednesday. A plan from Lexington County that called for football to move to January and spring sports like baseball and softball to the fall was voted down 16-1. A Greenville County proposal that would have stopped all summer workouts was voted down 13-1.
Those summer workouts are still in Phase 1 and are inconsistent throughout the state – some school districts have canceled them, some have taken weeks off, some haven't missed a day, and some still haven't started. That has produced concerns that there will be a competitive advantage, but Singleton believes that four-week window from first practice to first game can help level the playing field.
"That would be the difference between a team lifting weights and another one not, or a team running sprints and another team not. That's the extent of what they are able to do," he said. "There is no opportunity to do any strategic planning. There is no opportunity to put together any scheme or any routine, because it doesn't provide itself for that. The only thing they can do is strength and conditioning and limited access to, for lack of a better word, a ball."
Singleton again emphasized the importance of social distancing and wearing masks and other facial coverings. He said that what occurs during a practice accounts for only a small percentage of the day, and he said everyone needs to do their part if there can even be an abbreviated season.
"It's really gonna depend on how well things occur in the general community as to whether we can move forward to play these games at the schools," he said.
