PIAA opts for countyby-county return to sports

The restart of high school athletics in Pennsylvania will follow the state government’s coronavirus reopening plan, the PIAA board agreed Wednesday.

The Board of Control elected to use as a guide the state’s reopening instructions, which allow a county-by-county status change during the coronavirus pandemic. Under the Plan for Pennsylvania, many counties have gone from the harshest of the three phases, the “red phase” to the “yellow phase,” though large swathes of the Philadelphia suburbs into the Lehigh Valley remain red. Schools can only reopen when a county or region attains the “green phase,” and sports won’t happen if schools can’t open.

From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, back in March when the PIAA first postponed and eventually cancelled winter championships, the PIAA deferred decisions on spring sports to government oversight. The spring season was only cancelled when Gov. Tom Wolf decreed that schools would close for the academic year. A similar go-ahead to open schools would be required for fall sports like football to get

underway.

Wednesday’s decision is an offshoot of that stance. No reopening date has been set. Though the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) published a list of reopening considerations this week, the PIAA appears intent on filtering them through the lens of local governance, including review by the PIAA’s sports medicine advisory committee.