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Western Alamance guard Gavion Taylor fights through the Concord defense during last season's Holiday Hoopla basketball tournament at Eastern Alamance.
Times-News
Times-News
The wheels are turning on a return to high school sports activities in Alamance County and a path forward could be laid out as soon as Monday, following a 6½-month layoff due to coronavirus.
The Alamance-Burlington School System athletics department will present a plan of resumption to the school board at Monday night’s meeting, department athletics director George Robinson told the Times-News.
“We've got a presentation we need to do before the school board on Monday,” Robinson said. “We don't really have a return date, but we just wanted to provide them with some information as to what a return plan would look like. Then we will seek some guidance from them in regards to a return date. So we don't have (concrete dates). We're making preparations to get ready to start athletics, we're just not sure when we're going to be able to start.”
The ABSS school board and superintendent Bruce Benson have the final say on any decisions regarding a timeline for resumption.
“It just depends upon the information we provide to the board,” Robinson said. “Hopefully, after we provide that information, we would love to be able to go maybe sometime that week (for cross country and volleyball) given that they give us their permission, maybe as early as Wednesday. Or if we needed to wait until the following week, if they're not comfortable with us coming back this soon. And obviously, we would have to temper our expectations. We want to get started. But we also want to do it in a safe and responsible way.”
Area athletes have been unable to work out in official team settings since March 14, when the North Carolina High School Athletic Association suspended spring sports due to the virus outbreak.
“We know, eventually, we are going to get started,” Robinson said. “From a competitive advantage, there are other counties around us that have already started. We want to give our kids a fighting chance as well to be successful. But again, I can't impress enough, we want to do it in a safe and responsible way that will not only keep the kids safe, but keep coaches safe, and then in turn keep the community safe."
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Neighboring Guilford County schools are set to begin voluntary workouts Monday for cross country and volleyball. Workouts for other sports will resume in the coming months on a staggered basis.
“We're not able to quarantine like they're doing in the NBA," Robinson said. "We can't do what they do with college football; we can't sequester ourselves to a dormitory. Our kids are going to leave our facilities, and they're going to go back to their respective communities within this county. We don't want them to carry a potentially deadly virus with them. We just want to make sure that our kids are safe, but we also want to make sure that the general public is safe, and we need to do that in a responsible way."
Robinson said the presentation will include the athletic department’s timeline in bringing sports back and safety procedures for welcoming athletes back to campuses and into team environments.
“We’re going to take temperatures and there's a series of questions that they would have to answer for us,” Robinson said. “There are specific building level plans, like in regards to dropping your kids off, picking them up, what does that look like in regards to time frame. We would also talk about what a particular workout would look like while respecting social distancing and coaches wearing masks and student-athletes wearing masks.
“It's more of an informative thing, but we do need (the board’s) blessing in regards to when we can start back. So we'll make a recommendation. I could tell you a date, but then they could come back and say something totally different. (Any official decisions) need to come from them.”
Robinson said the idea is to bring back sports on a staggered basis, based upon the altered athletic calendar released by the state high school association.
“If we are given the permission, we would bring back cross country and volleyball right now, and then we would stagger in other sports a week or two after they started,” Robinson said. “… Basically, the way that the athletic association has laid it out, would basically be the way that we would try to introduce them back for workouts and onto our campuses.”
Athletes will have to register at AthleticClearance.com in order to participate in sports when the school district gives the go-ahead on a return.
There, athletes will be asked to register an account, fill out online forms, including COIVD-19 screening questions, and provide medical history in order to be cleared to play.
Athletes must provide a pre-participation sports physical to their school athletics directors.
Physicals received on or after May 2 will be valid. If the physical was done between March 1, 2019, and May 1, 2020, that athlete will be granted a temporary extension to participate through the end of the current school year. Students who had a physical before March 1 of last year, will need a new one.
