Darren Kinnard
Section618.com
WHEATON — DuPage County Judge Paul Fullerton denied issuing a temporary restraining order against the IHSA in a lawsuit brought by three parents seeking to rescind the IHSA Board of Director’s modified season plan.
The class action suit claimed the IHSA broke its own rules when it implemented the modified schedule without a membership vote. If the TRO would’ve been granted, it would’ve immediately put an end to the current IHSA schedule. The IHSA pointed out in a release that even if the TRO had been granted, it would not have changed the ability to play football, boys soccer, or girls volleyball due to the guidelines put in place by the Governor in the All Sports Policy.
IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson released a statement that included perhaps his strongest words on the situation.
“As the Executive Director of the IHSA and the father of a current three-sport high school student-athlete, I want to speak candidly to all the student-athletes, coaches, and parents who were following today’s lawsuit, and have been impacted by the modifications to the IHSA seasons due to the pandemic. First and foremost, we know how important high school athletics are to your mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
While the IHSA defended itself in court, our defense was not a rebuttal against expanding the participation opportunities for high school athletes in Illinois. The IHSA has and continues to believe that we can safely conduct high school sports in Illinois throughout the 2020-21 school year. We are already conducting cross country, golf, swimming & diving, and tennis this fall, with a plan in place to run all sports in modified seasons this school year. If changes to that schedule are forthcoming, we feel that the path to achieving them is through collaboration with the Illinois Department of Public Health and state leadership, as opposed to litigation.
It is important to acknowledge that COVID-19 is real. It has had an immeasurable impact on our state and country. We want to see IHSA student-athletes safely return to the fields and courts, just as so many high school student-athletes in surrounding states have. We believe we can mitigate many of the risks of the virus and successfully provide these opportunities for our students.
This lawsuit shines a light on the need for more data and transparency from IDPH and state leadership on what benchmarks need to be accomplished in order for the IHSA to conduct further sports offerings. We have and will continue to lobby our contacts at the state and IDPH levels, providing them with relevant data from across the country. If there are no changes by IDPH and state leadership, we will continue with our contingency plan of offering IHSA sports in the winter, spring, and summer. Our goal remains to provide every IHSA student-athlete the opportunity to compete in their respective sport or sports in 2020-21.”
The IHSA moved football, girls volleyball, and boys soccer to the spring. Under the Governor’s All Sports Policy, only low risk sports are allowed to have competitions. Medium and high risk sports can only practice at this point, and there have been no metrics released on how the different phases can change. Winter sports including basketball are scheduled to start practice in mid-November.