Lackawanna schools leaning toward delaying sports
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The Wyoming Valley Conference plans on proceeding with fall sports as scheduled, but there could be an issue to tackle. The Lackawanna Interscholastic Athletic Association might not do the same.
The WVC athletic directors met Tuesday and decided to keep on schedule for football heat acclimation to start Aug. 10 and fall sports practices to start on Aug. 17 despite the COVID-19 pandemic. They will meet again on Thursday.
The LIAA — often referred to simply as the Lackawanna League — is strongly considering pushing back the start of the fall season. Its athletic directors meet on Wednesday followed by a meeting of its principals. Abington Heights has already suspended fall sports and superintendent Michael Mahon said in a statement he believes it’s doubtful fall sports will be played.
The WVC and LIAA form District 2, and a split in starting dates could have a major effect on two fall sports schedules and district playoffs.
The WVC football schedule consists of 94 games, with 34 of them against Lackawanna League opponents. A solution could be for some WVC teams to play each other twice to get in 10 regular-season games. Since an even number of WVC football teams would be affected each week, the schedule could be retooled where no WVC team loses a game.
The Lackawanna League doesn’t have field hockey, but five of its teams plays in the WVC. Again, a split in starting dates would require the WVC to tweak the schedule.
The WVC would lose some non-conference games in soccer and girls volleyball, but the regular-season schedules would remain intact. Cross country, girls tennis and golf wouldn’t be affected.
More clarity in the WVC’s final decision could come Wednesday morning when the conference’s superintendents meet.
The Lackawanna League is considering two alternatives to the start of fall sports.
The first would be to push all sports back, although a specific date hasn’t been set. The other is a three-tier approach to starting fall sports.
The three-tier plan would have cross country, girls tennis and golf starting on schedule on Aug. 17. Field hockey, soccer and girls volleyball would hold its first practices on Aug. 24. Football would start practice on Sept. 14 with the first games on Oct. 2, which would be Week 6 of the season under normal circumstances.
Gov. Tom Wolf’s office is expected to release more guidelines on the resumption of sports on Wednesday. The current guidelines — which were released in a document on June 10 and updated on July 15 — prohibited spectators at high school events.
The PIAA released the no-spectators rule as part of its Return to Competition plan. It received so much criticism and complaints that it issued a statement saying the rule was from the governor’s office.
Since the no-spectators rule was announced, there have been online petitions against it and a backlash from other state officials. State house majority leader Kerry Benninghoff (R-Centre) and 62 other Republicans sent letters to Wolf and PIAA Board of Directors president Frank Majikes on Monday voicing opposition to the rule. The PIAA Board of Directors is scheduled to meet Aug. 26.
Four leagues have already pushed back fall sports — the Mid-Penn Conference, the WPIAL, the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and the Inter-Academic League. The MPC is in District 3 with mostly teams from the Harrisburg area. WPIAL is Pittsburgh and surrounding area comprising District 7. The EPC is in District 11 in the Lehigh Valley and Poconos while the Inter-Academic League consists of private schools in Philadelphia.
Uniontown, a District 7 school which borders West Virginia, is the only school in the state known to have canceled any of its sports seasons. Uniontown has decided not to play contact sports — football and boys and girls soccer — but has not yet made a decision on other fall sports.