Return to sports evolving

By JEFF LAMPE
For The Prairie News

The long-awaited start of high school basketball season is finally coming. When and how is all that remains to be finalized.

Gov. JB Pritzker’s office announced last Friday that all sports – including sports deemed high-risk such as football, basketball and wrestling – can be played in those Illinois regions that have rolled back to Phase 4 mitigations.

As of Tuesday, five of the state’s 11 regions had returned to Phase 4 and five more were one step away, in Tier 1 mitigations. Only one region, the Metro East area on the Missouri border, still faces the stricter Tier 2 restrictions.

Junior high volleyball and basketball teams are already scheduling games to start in February, as per direction from the Illinois Elementary School Association. Stark County opens its volleyball season on Feb. 1 at Wethersfield at 5 and a basketball schedule is being drawn up, according to Athletic Director Scott Paxson.

The Illinois High School Association was to meet Wednesday to set up a formal schedule for the next few months, since the start of boys and girls basketball seasons were delayed by the state’s COVID-19 restrictions.
Coaches and athletic directors were waiting direction from that meeting to establish schedules.

Jeff Kratzer, athletic director and boys basketball coach at Princeville, said ADs held a statewide meeting with IHSA officials last week, during which IHSA Director Craig Anderson said “baseball, softball and track are a high priority because they lost out last spring and they are considered low-risk sports.”

The change back to allowing sports means ADs will have to scramble to schedule games and hire officials, which could be problematic. For one thing, not all regions are open for play, so some teams may not be able to face conference foes. Officials could also be in short supply, since some are sitting out this season due to COVID-19 concerns and there will be a likely glut of games in a compressed schedule.

To come up with a solution, ADs from the various conferences are meeting. The Lincoln Trail Conference had a meeting scheduled for Thursday, which was also the date for another statewide meeting of athletic directors.

“We’ve had a couple LTC AD meetings, and I think the consensus is we’ll take care of our conference first and whatever is left after that, if there is time, go out and find some games,” Kratzer said. “We’d obviously like to play Brimfield [in basketball], they’re only 15 minutes away and a good rival. But we’ll just have to see.

“Once it is all announced, all the ADs in the state will be in a mad scramble.”

For junior high athletes, practice started this week and many volleyball games are scheduled to start Feb. 1. Junior high basketball schedules are still evolving, but many schools expect to start playing by Feb. 8.