The state’s school activities organization has pushed back the start date for winter and spring high school sports.
The Alaska School Activities Association this month announced an updated schedule for sports and other activities through the end of the year, although some seasons are still up in the air.
January 11th is the new start date for girls and boys basketball and cheer. That will allow for quarantine time if students are returning from holiday travel.
Those teams could play through the end of March. Of course everything is subject to change depending on the spread of coronavirus around the state. The Petersburg School District’s activities director Jaime Cabral said basketball and other sports could still have a state championship in the spring.
“The state’s plan, the intent is to have a state championship and then a month out kind of give a heads up of what it may look like, or if it’s even going to happen, kind of like what they did with the fall activities,” he explained. “About a month out they kind of see what things are happening, what the state’s looking like, is it feasible on the host location as well. So about a month before the state championship is typically their plan to give the schools notification of whether state will happen or not.”
State championships for some fall sports were canceled this year, while others were modified to limit the number of participants and spectators. The ASAA is ending any remaining fall sports on November 22nd.
Southeast schools are still working on a schedule for the basketball season with a first game on January 22nd. Cabral said basketball games would likely have limited fans in the stands, with two tickets allotted to each player, like the school has done for volleyball games this fall.
“The two tickets allows us to still meet all the six-foot requirements within the gym, keep the numbers down, especially for the visiting teams, because then you start adding in the people that are on the floor as well,” Cabral said. “But the two tickets has worked out pretty good and we’ve gotten good feedback and people have been great about coming in, masking, following all the protocols just to keep our kids safe so they can see them play, in person.”
High school wrestling has a tentative start date March 22nd although the ASAA board will decide that season next month. Other spring sports could also have a March 22nd start date and run through the end of May.
The middle school is focusing on intramural activities and started up cornhole this week.
