well it's started.......

new mexico has become the first state to cancel the 2020 football season. a little good news, they are looking to start football in the spring.


if the ihsa would move football to the spring, it's going to be so weird to start the season in potential bitter cold and snow and end with the state championships in potential 90° heat and humidity.

As long as we have it I am all for it!!

And then do they push baseball/ track back into the summer of 2021?????

HHSTigerFan2 wrote:And then do they push baseball/ track back into the summer of 2021?????

ihsa still may flip the seasons. meeting sometime soon to decide.

HHSTigerFan2 wrote:And then do they push baseball/ track back into the summer of 2021?????

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In the interview today, Anderson talked of the possibility of having ALL sport seasons during the second half of the school year (January on). The seasons would obviously be shortened due to trying to play fall, winter, spring sports in the span of 5-6 months, but his point was that if fall doesn't happen, they want to be able to give kids this year the chance to play all of their sports they are normally involved in.

While this wasn't mentioned, I would say another option would be modeling after the state of Iowa with Baseball/Softball being played in the summer. I don't think Iowa does track in the summer; I believe they do golf and track in the spring, but IHSA could do Track in summer too since I assume a lot of track athletes also play football.

I think if you try and fit everything into spring you are going to have to Start the next Fall season in Sept and kick every season back a month which might work out good the following spring for baseball and softball with Rainy weather.

Basketball I would assume would end in Mid March and football would start right after that. Since I like football and our Season is only 9 games im not trimming anything off that schedule so that state finals would take us to the end of June.

Spring Sports would have July, August, and their State Finals at the first week of Sept before hoping to jump back into regular fall season after Labor Day.

If delaying season and want sports to be played, my first thought

December/Xmas Break - Mid-Feb - B/G Basketball, Wrestling (8 weeks of play, 2 week off)
March - April - Football, Soccer, Volleyball (8 weeks of play 2 weeks off)
May - June - Track, Baseball/Softball, Golf, Tennis (6 weeks of play)

Maybe golf, tennis, x country this fall but only if they can guarantee sports played later in the year.
State determines schedule based on geography, try to maintain conference as much as possible, no state series for any sports.

net wrote:

HHSTigerFan2 wrote:And then do they push baseball/ track back into the summer of 2021?????

ihsa still may flip the seasons. meeting sometime soon to decide.

Well whatever happens hopefully people are understanding to the administrations and coaches, they are going to be busting their asses in a situation where they can not win

net wrote:

HHSTigerFan2 wrote:And then do they push baseball/ track back into the summer of 2021?????

ihsa still may flip the seasons. meeting sometime soon to decide.

I very well may be wrong, but I just don’t think the IHSA will do this. You risk the strong possibility that those spring sports may not play at all this fall, for the 2nd season in a row. Then you’ve got a senior this fall who hasn’t played HS baseball since his sophomore year...and won’t again. That just makes no sense to me. On top of playing a football season twice in 6 months, which in my opinion isn’t safe. My gut tells me they are going to try to back things off and start October 1 to buy some time. Perhaps push basketball back a bit to December.

Let’s be honest, the season with the most wiggle room is basketball. They could not start until January, still play 2-3 months, and it really wouldn’t hurt them. Spring sports in Illinois shouldn’t be starting until April anyway as crazy as our weather is.

lefty120 wrote:Perhaps push basketball back a bit to December.

long-time basketball guy, here. i wish the high school basketball season would start in mid-december at the earliest and ideally, to me, in january.

I’ve really soured on Thanksgiving Basketball tournaments over the years. IL would be just fine starting practice a week or 10 days later and starting games the Monday after Thanksgiving. Yes a few state final football teams will be effected but there will always be some crossover

We haven't played a game before Thanksgiving on my 5 years because of our success in basketball. I. 100% on board with Bball not starting until the Monday after Thanksgiving. We always struggle with numbers for Bball because 3 of the last 4 years the Football players go from losing in the Quarterfinals on a Saturday to practicing on Wednesday or Thursday the next week's. Last year we had several kid regret not playing basketball but they were burned out. If you give them a week or two, I think they would change their minds.

IF football was to be played in March and April, natural grass fields will likely take a beating to the point of them being unplayable due to the typical wet weather in those months.  

that said, there are enough turf fields around the state at high schools and colleges that, maybe, those could be utilized by schools that don't have turf.  one site (with turf) could host two varsity-only games on both Thursday and Friday nights and host maybe 5 varsity only contests all day on Saturday.

just in "this area" alone (within 2 hours of sterling) i can think of several sites with turf: sterling hs, freeport hs, geneseo hs, mendota hs, alleman hs (augie), lasalle peru hs, rock island hs, dekalb hs, east moline hs, niu, dunlap hs, morton hs, galesburg hs, monmouth college, knox college, and wiu.  that's 16 sites that could host 9 "area" games each weekend. that's a total of 144 games (288 teams) every week.

just spitballin here

2 high schools in indiana have postponed fall sports.

california starting football in december.

net wrote:

HHSTigerFan2 wrote:And then do they push baseball/ track back into the summer of 2021?????

ihsa still may flip the seasons. meeting sometime soon to decide.

Not going to get much support around here, but to me, flipping fall and spring sports is a hard no, and I don't think IHSA would be able to keep up with all the potential lawsuits from all the spring sport people that already lost last season. I understand that it sucks for football, but it sucked last spring for those sports. People say "flip the seasons", but what that really means is "screw the spring sports, we want football". Realistically, if the season are flipped, my daughters would be juniors before ever playing on inning of softball for their high school.

I might think differently if I actually thought the decision to play would be based on each sport individually. "Football is too much and too close of contact right now, so move to spring, but golf and softball/baseball are ok for fall". However, my guess is the administrators and lawyers will take the approach of "football is too dangerous right now, so we must cancel all sports to keep things equal".

Moving all sports to some kind of spring schedule seems like a logistical nightmare. My kids high school is larger than most, with a decent amount of indoor training space and outdoor fields. However, even in a normal year teams are scrambling to find practice space. Before things were shutdown last spring, my daughters had 5:30am softball practices because that's when indoor space was available. You have coaches that do multiple sports, you have fields used by multiple sports. Our high school baseball field (grass, not turf) is used in fall as a football practice field. How do you play baseball on it after it's been torn up after being used by football all spring when ground is thawing out and everything is muddy.