The Ohio High School Athletic Association this week provided some optimism about the possibility of salvaging a spring sports season. Area athletic directors are prepared to do some creative scheduling if it happens.
The OHSAA released an amended spring schedule, pending that the stay at home order is lifted and school resumes May 4. Acclimation periods would run from May 4-8 with seasons beginning May 9. The new plan would call for roughly three weeks of a regular season before the postseason starts.
Scheduling a season’s worth of contests into a few weeks provides a nearly impossible challenge, but school athletic officials will attempt to get as many games in as possible.
“For our conference, it’s not as difficult because we only play one round of league games,” said Riverside AD Rod Yoder. “Our focus will be to get our league games in, so we can have a league champion. If the weather cooperates and we have some open days, we will schedule as many non-conference games as we can squeeze in.”
It’s a little bit of a different story for leagues like the Central Buckeye Conference, which Bellefontaine, Benjamin Logan and Indian Lake compete in. Typically, the CBC plays 16 conference contests for baseball and softball.
“Right now, we’ve only had some low-level discussions,” said Bellefontaine AD Matt Comstock. “As a conference, we have a video conference set up for April 24. At that point, we should have a better feel on things and we can discuss our options from there.”
One thing is for certain: it will take some scheduling creativity to put a season together over such a short time span.
“From a league standpoint, we would love to be able to crown league champions and have a full league schedule,” said Benjamin Logan athletic director Scott Reule. “But the biggest focus is just to give our kids an opportunity to play. It may not look like what we normally do, but we still want to put together a quality schedule of competition.”
One possibility the CBC will likely discuss is playing only division games for baseball and softball, which would result in a 10-game schedule instead of 16. After that, if time allows, adding some crossover games would be a possibility.
For track and field, instead of competing in large invitationals, the new schedules will likely consist of smaller meets with just a few teams.
“We have already discussed some ideas and we will have some options in place to look at when we get closer to the new dates that have in place,” said Reule.
A no-contact order remains for all high school sports teams, prohibiting face-to-face instruction between coaches and their athletes. However, coaches are permitted to use electronic communication to keep in touch with their teams.
“I have encouraged all of our coaches to keep in communication with their team,” said Yoder. “Our football coach (Bryce Hodge) has done a Zoom conference with his athletes. I definitely think it’s good to stay in contact with our athletes while we remain in this holding pattern.”