JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The governor wants high school sports back. Athletes and coaches can’t wait to return. The medical professionals who advise the state’s governing body of high school athletics still don’t think it’s safe to do so yet.
The Florida High School Athletic Association has spent the last few weeks listening to as many groups as possible to help it make a decision on the sports season in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The final piece of input that came in Wednesday from its own sports medicine advisory committee and that may wind up holding the most weight in what has become an ongoing and raging debate about when high school athletics should begin. That group’s recommendation is to push the start of the high school sports season back by at least a month and allow for more data to arrive after students return to campuses.
Which way does the FHSAA go this time in its third board meeting since mid-July?
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has publicly backed a start date for sports on Aug. 24. An online petition backing that day has garnered more than 35,000 signatures since Monday.
The FHSAA is looking at three options, dubbed Option 1, Option 3 and Option 3B, for its board to study and vote on during a board of directors meeting in Gainesville on Friday morning. That meeting will be streamed online beginning at 10 a.m.
Advisory committees thus far have leaned heavily in favor of starting practices Aug. 24 (football coaches committee) and closely in favor of delaying the season to potentially as late as November (athletic directors committee).
But the group whose input will likely carry the most significant weight is the sports medicine advisory committee, or SMAC, an 18-person group that delivered a report last month that flipped the season on its head.
In updated material on Wednesday, the SMAC voted 13-0 to recommend the FHSAA’s third option, with a bit of modification. The initial option three would push the start of the regular season to late November, with regular season games starting in mid-December.
The FHSAA added a SMAC-edited option 3B in its updated agenda on Wednesday, which calls for a practice start date of Oct. 12 for bowling, cross country, football, girls weightlifting and volleyball for Season 1 sports.
The regular season for fall sports would begin Oct. 23 and end sometime in December. Winter sports like basketball, competitive cheerleading, soccer and wrestling and would be pushed to January. Tennis, a spring sport, would move to Season 2 under that proposal.
Spring sports such as baseball, boys volleyball and weightlifting, flag football, lacrosse, softball and track and field would begin in March and end in June in Season 3. Fall sports like golf and swimming would move into spring under that proposal.
Executive director George Tomyn, Florida Gov. DeSantis and thousands of parents, coaches and athletic directors are in favor of option one, which would permit practices to begin Aug. 24 and games beginning either Sept. 4 or the week of Sept. 7. That would permit a nine-week regular season in football and, on the surface, what looks like a normal state playoff season.
But is that realistic? The FHSAA’s own medical advisory committee didn’t think so last month and doesn’t think so now.
Robert Sefcik, executive director of the Jacksonville Sports Medicine Program and member of the SMAC, said that the committee has tried to view this creatively, because that’s what it’s going to take to safely get athletes back out on the field in the midst of a pandemic.
Schools around the state are largely still in summer break and many have pushed back the start date due to COVID-19 prep and precautionary work. Viewing things through that lens, Sefcik said that SMAC doesn’t feel comfortable from a safety standpoint of green-lighting a return to sports when students haven’t even returned to campus. Athletes have largely remained working out in small groups. What happens when the entire student body returns to school?
“That’s what it’s about, it’s about trying to create some great ideas that are innovative that aren’t necessarily the normal of what we’re doing but will still allow kids to get in some participation even if it’s a ramped up version of what we’re seeing now,” Sefick said.
“As brick and mortar schools begin, we can continue to track that information. The FHSAA staff is still [time] challenged. They still have a few more days to refine some of those options that they’re going to present to the board on Friday.”
The SMAC report listed a Sept. 28 start for the first date of fall practice, roughly a four-week period from the time that many schools around the state will have had students back on campus.
“Based upon the available data from reputable sources in the state of Florida, Nationally, and Globally, the FHSAA SMAC and invited physicians strongly recommend that we delay the start of the Fall sports season beyond August 24 in order to evaluate crucial data of COVID-19 3-4 weeks after schools have opened,” the report read.
“In order to bring sports back in the safest manner possible, and with the greatest chance of all sports having a complete season without disruption, this time will allow an educated and well-thought out plan with critical mitigation measures to be executed by schools once the COVID-19 safety benchmarks noted above.”
A benchmarks like a 5% or under in percent-positive cases for at least 14 days is at the top of the SMAC list.
Upon receiving the recommendations of the SMAC last month at its first emergency board meeting, the FHSAA voted 10-5 to start the season on time on July 27. Going against the SMAC report didn’t sit right with several board members and the FHSAA was widely panned for going against medical advice. Three days later, more credence was given to that report and the board reversed things, this time on an 11-4 vote.
“Everybody including us, every single member of the sports medicine advisory committee wants nothing more than to get back to sports. We love it. … So I understand. We want to be there,” Sefcik said.
“It’s just that, as adults, we need to really think rationally, really analyze the information we do have available to us and make the right decision, make the smart decision, make the safe decision, so that we can all enjoy sports when we get back. We don’t want to move in haste and then have to suspend again. We would like to resume life and keep it going forward rather than there being a stop.”