Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools AD: ’50-50’ fall sports, prep football, kicks off in August
Sue Doran, the athletic director for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, said she is planning to start the 2020-21 sports season Aug. 1. But she has some coronavirus-fueled doubts that will happen.
“I think all of that might be predicated on what does school look like,” Doran said during an appearance on “Talking Preps,” the Observer’s streaming sports talk show. “If they’re not going to allow students on our campuses to be students, I don’t know how we can have student-athletes on our campuses to be student-athletes. I think the academic side of it drives it as much as the athletic side.
“I hope we hit the ground running Aug. 1 (with the scheduled start of fall sports practice). If you’re asking an opinion, I think it’s 50-50. I am not real confident it’s going to happen.”
This week, the N.C. High School Athletic Association said schools could allow student-athletes to return to campus for off-season workouts as early as June 1, provided that Gov. Roy Cooper’s statewide mandates would allow for it.
The NCHSAA had ordered schools to observe a “dead period” since March during which no sports-related activities for student-athletes were allowed on campus.
Currently, North Carolina is in Phase 1 of a reopening, which allows for a 10-person limit on gatherings. Phase 2, which begins later this month, would allow for an increased number of people allowed at gatherings and could potentially allow student-athletes to return to campus.
CMS teams are scheduled to begin off-season workouts the second week of June.
Due to all of the changes, there has been some talk among coaches and athletic directors of potentially moving the football season to the spring if the virus prevents teams from playing this fall.
Doran said she’d prefer to not do that.
“I don’t think there’s any question that football drives the budget and is a critical sport for our high school athletic programs as a whole,” she said. “I don’t think the money piece of it is going to be the driving decision but I think it’s a critical piece, and for me, I would want football to be played in the fall, even if it meant giving up a couple or three games if we had to postpone (the start of the season in August).
“I think football in the fall benefits our student-athletes and our entire athletic program as a whole.”
CMS has long required athletes to have a 2.0 grade point average in their previous semester to play sports. Doran said she has made a proposal to CMS Supt. Earnest Winston to temporarily eliminate that rule for the first semester of the upcoming school year because the current one has been abruptly changed due to COVID-19. Students have been taken out of the classroom.
Doran said that rule change would be part of CMS’ plan for fall sports, which she said is still based upon practices beginning Aug. 1.
“When anything happens or anything is announced that means that’s not possible,” she said, “I think at that point we’ll look to what our Plan B will be and how we’ll move from there. It’s hard to have a Plan B until you know what the causes of wiping out Plan A were. Are they going to say ‘It’s another month (delay)‘ or ‘moving to spring’?
“We don’t know.”
This story was originally published May 14, 2020 at 12:05 PM.
