Can NC high school sports start on time this fall? Commissioner says it’s ‘difficult’
N.C. High School Athletic Association commissioner Que Tucker spent a few hours Monday on a video conference call with superintendents and principals across the state.
“We were talking about how to safely do anything,” Tucker told the Observer. “How to eat, ride the bus, get into the (school) building and in the classroom. And I was on there talking about athletics. Based on what I hear as it relates to just getting school underway Aug. 17, it would be difficult in my mind to think we would be able to say, ‘Oh absolutely we’re going to start all sports, of any kind, on Aug. 1.’ But that’s based on me being a classroom teacher and knowing what’s entailed in opening up school under normal circumstances and it’s just difficult for me to envision we can do anything (with athletics) prior to school starting.”
Tucker will hold a media session, via video-conference, Wednesday at 11. It’s unclear what she’ll be announcing, but could be related to at least postponing the start of fall sports practice.
Tucker told the Observer that the NCHSAA planned to survey its more than 400 member schools Tuesday to find out which ones had started voluntary summer workouts for fall sports and which had not. Tucker believes that only around 20 percent of schools are participating right now.
Union County Schools began workouts Monday. Cabarrus County plans to start July 20. Mecklenburg and Wake County, the state’s two largest systems, originally targeted a July 6 start date — about three weeks after the NCHSAA allowed teams to return June 15. But last week, Mecklenburg Schools and Wake announced they would postpone again, due to coronavirus concerns. Neither has announced a new date.
As of now, the official start date for high school practice is Aug. 1 and teams could begin playing Aug. 17.
Tucker said it will be hard to make serious plans about the upcoming season until she hears how N.C. Governor Roy Cooper will open schools.
“We’ve always had very consistent start dates for all our member schools,” Tucker said. “This year, it’s Aug. 1 (fall sports), Nov. 2 (winter) and Feb. 15 (spring). Now what do we do if (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools) says on Aug. 17, ‘We’re going to start remote learning only,’ but Guilford County says, ‘Oh no, we’ll go 50 percent’ and then you have another system that says ‘we’ll go remote learning as well?’ ”
Tucker said if a system goes all remote learning, having sports there might be difficult.
“It depends,” she said. “If you have remote learning, how could you let people play, because remote learning says, ‘We don’t think it’s safe enough for students to be in the building.’ If you don’t think it’s safe enough to be in the building, is it safe enough to be in the locker room, on the field, in gyms? It’s all tied together.”
Tucker said the NCHSAA is formulating multiple plans for sports, including pushing back the start of practice to Aug. 15 or even Sept. 1. Some states, including Texas and Virginia, have begun to talk about potentially moving high school football season to the spring. Tucker said that wouldn’t be a foreign thought in North Carolina, either.
“You always have to have that on the table,” she said. “It’s possible if we don’t play fall sports. What I want to know is if we don’t (play traditional sports this fall), is it right to assume we might be able to play second semester, and if we could then, what do you do? Until we know what the Governor is going to say about reopening schools, we can’t give (any plans). That’s the hardest thing for people to understand. They think we’re going to tell the Governor and (N.C. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary) Mandy Cohen what to do and what they’ll say on TV. It doesn’t work that way.”
