Darren Kinnard
Section618.com
The soap opera surrounding high school sports in Illinois continues. In the same afternoon that Governor JB Pritzker said he “asked” that basketball be moved to the spring, the IHSA released its guidance for winter sports, including basketball which is scheduled to start practice November 16, with games starting November 30.
When asked at his daily COVID briefing about the IHSA’s decision to play basketball as scheduled, Pritzker said “We’re not shutting them down, we’ve asked that they be moved to the spring, some later in the spring. What we’re trying to is get to a point where positivity levels are much lower, where the number of cases in our state is much lower, and where I hope and pray, we will have much better treatments and vaccines available.”
This was the IHSA response when asked about the Governor’s announcement that he wanted basketball to be moved to the spring: “The IHSA has not received additional outreach from the Governor’s office or IDPH since Tuesday, and as a result, are not comfortable commenting. Please refer to the press release from yesterday for the IHSA’s current winter schedule.”
The current IHSA sports calendar has boys and girls basketball set for the winter season with football, volleyball and boys soccer slated for the spring.
Pritzker maintains sports is secondary, considering 1.8 million students in the state who are not in school everyday. “The fact that the IHSA has a different opinion, I mean I’ve known that for some time about different areas of sports. We have talked to them on a frequent basis, gotten their opinions on each one of these things,” Pritzker said. “It’s going to be incumbent upon schools to make decisions for themselves. That’s what we’ve left schools to do–to make decisions about how to keep the children, the kids that go to school there, the people that work there, safe.”
Just hours before the IHSA was scheduled to make an announcement about its winter seasons Tuesday, the Governor announced that basketball and wrestling was on hold. The Illinois Department of Public Health also moved basketball to the Higher Risk level, which means only no-contact practices are allowed currently. The IHSA said it was notified of the changes 15 minutes before the announcement.
Wednesday, the IHSA announced that its Board of Directors had voted to move wrestling to the summer season, but go ahead with boys and girls basketball, despite the guidance sent down by Governor and the IDPH. Wednesday night, State Superintendent Dr. Carmen Ayala sent a letter to school administrators saying while they understood the importance of sports in the lives of students, they urged principals and superintendents to “prioritize health and safety.”
“Defying the state’s public health guidance opens schools up to liability and other ramifications that may negatively impact school communities,” Ayala wrote in the letter.
Here is the sport by sport guidance from the IHSA released this afternoon: Basketball, Bowling, Cheerleading, Dance, Girls Gymnastics, Boys Swimming and Diving.