Athletes get answers as CIF officials continue to lead the way during uncertain times

Players from Woodbridge (right) and Northwood meet for the coin toss before a game last season. (File photo: Fernando M. Donado, For OC Sports Zone)

High school athletes from around Southern California, including Orange County, made their voices heard about the future of high school sports Wednesday during a CIF conference with Southern Section Commissioner Rob Wigod.

With much uncertainty about the future of high school sports in 2021, coaches, athletic directors and CIF officials have expressed their concerns.

But on Wednesday, it was the athletes’ turn. They asked their questions in advance on Twitter and a CIF official read the questions to Wigod during the session which was carried live on You Tube.

“We’re all on the same side, we’re all on the same page, we all want to have our students back on campus and doing what they love to do and what we love to watch them do, but we have to go through procedures and protocols to make sure it is done in a safe and healthy way,” Wigod said.

Wigod remained upbeat stressing that a plan is in place for seasons to occur, but they can not happen without approval from state and other health officials. Wigod emphasized that CIF officials are in constant contact with state officials and have pointed out the importance of high school sports.

“It has been a while, and it’s going to be a little bit longer,” Wigod said. “We will be back, I assure you we will be back and we will look back at this and say, ‘look what we were able to get through and somehow make it to the other side’ and then we get back to doing everything that we love that you love and continue to foster education based athletics.”

Wigod did not indicate when sports might return, although he said that football games could begin in early March. The CIF state office announced last week that high school sports for 2021 are on hold as it awaits further guidance from the California Department of Public Health. They don’t expect that to come until at least Jan. 1, 2021.

Since that announcement, coronavirus cases in California and Orange County have continued to surge. The Orange County Health Agency reported that there were 2,613 new coronavirus cases (no new deaths) on Wednesday.

In addition, officials with Anaheim Union High School District and Santa Ana Unified recently announced that a number of activities, including high school conditioning, were being suspended.

But Wigod’s message to athletes on Wednesday was that he was not giving up and this is “not the time for you to give up.”

The nearly one-hour session covered a lot of ground and the athletes had some relevant and interesting questions.

Here are some of the questions students brought up:

The latest that football could start: “Let’s say that our football programs were allowed to begin practice on Feb. 15, our football programs are required to have 14 days of practice prior to their first game. If we started Feb. 15, the first contest would be March 5. In our calendar right now, that’s the ninth week of the regular season,” Wigod said.

“So let’s say the students were able to play on March 5 and March 12 and that was weeks nine and 10. There are four weeks scheduled for Southern Section Championships. At that point, we probably wouldn’t be able to do that. Those four weeks now become part of the regular season. Those league games you weren’t able to play before week nine and 10 could now be played in week 11, 12 and 13.

“We could get full league play done and maybe even potentially have some post-season. Maybe a bowl game kind of environment, without the ability to run Southern Section Championships we would still maybe have an additional week or two weeks to play a bowl game and give some kind of a post-season experience to our football student athletes.”

When would decisions have to be made on whether the fall sports can be played: “As we get to the beginning of February, it would get to a point where we have to make some clear decisions on what the future of fall sports would be. And don’t forget, we have a very ambitious list of spring sports. Those would be kicking off in the earlier part of March or the middle of March. And certainly those are certainly on schedule we hope, and hopefully they will be able to start on time,” Wigod said.

How would this year’s plan affect 2021-22? “The plans would be to keep everything in line, for not only this year, but be able to start in a more normal way for 2021-22 and then you would have a full basketball season here this year and certainly hope that would continue on and have a full basketball season for the year to come, and that would apply to all of our sports,” Wigod said.

Do all counties need to be open for a season to occur? “No, it would not require all counties to be open. It would certainly be done by the local health directors in deciding what was allowable or not allowable in that particular county. Our boys volleyball season was supposed to start this Saturday. If our county health directors are allowing teams to play sports starting at any time forward, even while we wait for guidelines we are hoping to get from the California Department of Health, our schools can begin competing. We certainly wouldn’t want to see that; we would love to see it happen all across our Southern Section footprint …. We do not want to be a barrier to anyone who is able to play in a healthy and safe way,” Wigod said.

Could cross country start before football and the other sports: “The health authorities have not given the clearance for that to happen in terms of competition. They’ve allowed the activities we mentioned earlier, physical conditioning under certain protocols. Many of our schools have taken advantage of that and it’s worked very well,” Wigod said.

Could testing be required: “It’s actually (up to) school districts, private school decisions …. I was talking to the CIF Executive Director about this earlier today and he told me any kind of a state-wide program would cost, with 400,000 student athletes state-wide, it would be of something like $20 to $30 million a week and there just doesn’t seem to be a funding mechanism if it was to be a state-wide student-athlete testing program…..” Wigod said.

Will cheer championships be held: Wigod said they are scheduled for the first week of April and he’s optimistic they can be held.

Wigod addressed a number of the issues in an interview with OC Sports Zone last week.

NOTE: To see the entire video conference, go to the CIF website.