PA Governor Recommends No Sports Til January 1; PIAA Delays To Discuss

Pennsylvania’s fall high school sports are briefly postponed as the PIAA discusses the governor’s recommendation to cancel all school and youth sports until January 1. Meanwhile Louisiana has released three options for high school swim meets amid the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf made a “strong recommendation” last week that all school and youth sports be postponed until January 1. The state’s Department of Health and Department of Education jointly supported the recommendation. But Wolf stopped short of an executive order, ultimately leaving the decision whether to play or not up to individual schools and sporting organizations.

That’s put the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) into tricky territory in making a decision for the state. The PIAA officially delayed the start of fall sports by two weeks so it could continue to discuss high school sports with Governor Wolf. The two-week delay runs until the next PIAA meeting on August 21.

“It is clear to PIAA, the unintended consequences of canceling fall sports need to be further reviewed,” the PIAA said. “Consistent with the advice of the PIAA Sports Medicine Advisory Committee, PIAA continues to believe it can safely sponsor fall sports.”

Swimming & diving remain winter sports in Pennsylvania, but typically start in November and run through March. The 2020 PIAA state meet was cut off mid-competition this past spring, one of the first swim meet casualties of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

Louisiana

Louisiana has official pushed back the start of its football season by about a month. The state remains in Phase II of its COVID-19 recovery plan, which still restricts most fall sports. But we’ve known since July that swimming would be permitted in Phase II.

Swimming is a fall sport in Louisiana. The state has also released three options for holding swim meets during the season, according to The Daily Iberian:

  • A traditional format, which alternates girls and boys events
  • Running all girls events, then all boys events
  • Running a virtual meet with teams swimming on their own and submitting times to a host school

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Bubbles
4 years ago

Just a taste. That’s all they needed. These politicians just needed a little taste of real power. Now they are all addicted.

Admin
Reply to  Bubbles
4 years ago

I’m confused. You’re saying that, before coronavirus, politicians had no ‘real power’?

Donnie trumpet
4 years ago

Governor wolf is a joke. You can’t play golf, tennis or run cross country because of covid? No school because the teachers union is the new American mafia – make us come to work and we won’t and still get paid ha ha ha

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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