CIF Postpones All Fall Sports; Will Combine Boys’ & Girls’ Water Polo Seasons

The California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports, is pushing the fall sports season to 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it announced Monday.

Should conditions come 2021 allow for team activities, all sports will be consolidated into two seasons – “fall” or “spring.” The revised schedule moves gives state championships dates for all sports, but the state’s 10 sections will each decide when their seasons start – likely in December or January fall sports.

Basketball (usually a winter sport), for example, will be moved to the spring with regional or state playoffs ending June 19. Earlier this month, the governing body’s Southern Section was reported to be considering holding all three sports seasons in an overlapping manner in the spring semester.

Boys’ and girls’ water polo will be combined into one season with the final day for regional and state championships being March 20; swimming & diving is set to end June 5. Under normal circumstances, boys’ water polo is a fall sport, girls’  is a winter sport, and coed swimming & diving is a spring sport. Additionally, the CIF will allow student-athletes to compete for their club teams simultaneously with their high school teams, the LA Times’ Eric Sondheimer reported.

The new schedule is as follows:

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SoCal coach
4 years ago

What’s going to be really interesting is how many water polo kids just don’t even bother with high school season. CIF is allowing kids to compete with their high school and club at the same time this year. I’m not sure what the reasoning would be for this, but some might just not even do high school since that’s an option.

As for swimming, this is best case scenario in my opinion! The only difference is the season getting pushed back a couple of weeks, but it’s still 3 months long. It’s nice that they didn’t overlap wp with swim too. With boys water polo (and girls wp but that’s typical) being right before swim season, those water polo/swimmers… Read more »

Flybkbrfr
4 years ago

Last date for Swimming and Diving State or Section Championships is June 5. US Team Trials begin June 13th.

Swim&PoloDad
4 years ago

Disappointing, but not surprising. At least the JOs won’t conflict with the HS water polo season. That is if there is JOs. . . .

About Torrey Hart

Torrey Hart

Torrey is from Oakland, CA, and majored in media studies and American studies at Claremont McKenna College, where she swam distance freestyle for the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps team. Outside of SwimSwam, she has bylines at Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, SB Nation, and The Student Life newspaper.

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