OHSAA director shares more details about fall sports plans

Goldring’s press conference, which took place online and included participants from across the state, preceded Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s office and the Ohio Department of Health releasing a final order to lay out procedures that schools, coaches, players and fans must follow for there to be a season this fall.

Here are five things Goldring was able to clarify even while waiting for the order:

1. The OHSAA encourages every school to try to play fall sports this fall, but the possibility it has to be completed at a later date does exist.

The OHSAA understands not every team is going to be able to play every week, but it remains to be seen if enough teams are impacted by the virus at one time to cause a full shutdown.

“Odds are high, I would say, that we’re going to see some positive cases,” Goldring said. “Odds are high that is going to mean that some seasons are paused — hopefully not ended. And we’re also realistic to understand that the governor would have the ability at any time to step in and say we’ve seen too many cases across the state, and so either all sports are halted or maybe all contact sports are halted.

“And if that’s the case, we’re reviewing other options. Could we continue our seasons after the first of the year? How long is a season considered as being complete without going through the full tournament rounds? Do we need to pick up that sport again later on? We’re considering those types of things.”

2. Teams not ready to start the season next week are still eligible for the playoffs.

Goldring said the OHSAA is in the process of building a tracking system to know how many teams are currently idled either because of local health department orders, a team outbreak or the need to quarantine a majority or all of a team per CDC guidelines as a result of a positive test or symptomatic player or players.

The goal is to update that weekly, and at this point there are about 80 football teams across the state (including locally Trotwood-Madison and all six Dayton Public Schools) who are either paused, waiting to start or already looking ahead to the spring because they do not intend to or can’t play this fall.

While a six-game regular season has been scheduled, there is no mimmim number of games that must be played to qualify for the football playoffs.

“Somebody could be 6-0 or 5-1 and somebody could be 0-1 and still have the opportunity to compete in our tournament,” Goldring said. “We’re still sorting out the details.”

3. The OHSAA is sensitive to fall sports interfering with spring sports after all spring seasons were canceled earlier this year.

“We’re concerned about how much is too much in offering those fall sports again in the spring and ‘ruining’ the spring seasons for those those teams because you’re going to have students that are going to have to make choices, and some of them using I guess football as the example,” Goldring said. “They may pull away from their baseball or their track teams or their lacrosse teams simply to play football.

“We see that as being somewhat unfortunate, but again we want to be helpful and offer kids that opportunity, but how far that opportunity goes is to be determined.”

4. The OHSAA won’t be involved if a team experiences an outbreak.

Testing, contact tracing and determining who must self-isolate or quarantine will have to be handled by the school and its local health department.

“That really has to be the school working with the local health department to get that person that shows the symptoms in the right place for testing and then setting in motion through the local health department, what happens to those that have been exposed to the students and so on and so forth,” Goldring said.

“I think we’re of the mindset that people are serious and understanding enough that they’re not going to try to sneak something by us. I think our coaches really understand that from what I can tell, that they understand the seriousness of it.”

5. The OHSAA had felt confident for a while the governor would sign off on fall sports.

Since replacing executive director Jerry Snodgrass in July, Goldring has maintained constant dialogue with DeWine’s office, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and the Ohio Department of Health about moving forward with the seasons.

“As you all know, students have been either competing or practicing pretty much all summer long or training all summer long, and if the governor was going to give us that opportunity, we want to provide that opportunity, so all along we felt pretty confident that we were going to move forward,” Goldring said. “Obviously the COVID numbers have changed, up and down, since that time, so in the back of our mind we thought there’s a chance that they may decide not to allow us to move forward with contact sports, but we’ve always been on the same page with them that things are looking good, things are progressing, and that we definitely want to move forward.”