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Corona and Fall Sports


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Now that the IHSAA has officially cancelled the spring sports seasons... What impact might this have on Fall Sports?

Is there concern that fall sports will be delayed or even cancelled?

Will spring sport athletes immediately begin training for fall sports and might the IHSAA implement a longer no-contact type period to prevent this from happening?

Will "in-season" rules still apply?

How might Fall/Spring coaches work together for the benefit of the development of the players?

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52 minutes ago, Irishman said:

My guess for the short term will be to ban workouts in June. I think we are in a wait and see mode through the month of May though. I don't think any decision will come sooner than mid May. 

June is also Girls Basketball month for HS. I hope that's not affected, but won't surprise me if it's cancelled also. 

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I honestly think for the betterment of all student athletes, the IHSAA should have a BACKUP plan to play football in the spring with a shortened regular season. Let the kids decide. If it's a baseball kid, let him play baseball. At this point it's not about what a kid does, it's about letting all kids experience their sport and having something to be excited about again. 6-8 game season, with playoffs. Not that I think they should pull the trigger early, just have a plan.

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6 hours ago, Hoosier Hawk said:

Now that the IHSAA has officially cancelled the spring sports seasons... What impact might this have on Fall Sports?

Is there concern that fall sports will be delayed or even cancelled?

Will spring sport athletes immediately begin training for fall sports and might the IHSAA implement a longer no-contact type period to prevent this from happening?

Will "in-season" rules still apply?

How might Fall/Spring coaches work together for the benefit of the development of the players?

Always do what is best for the kids and all teams. Work together. There will be school and fall sports starting on time.  

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8 hours ago, Raven67 said:

I honestly think for the betterment of all student athletes, the IHSAA should have a BACKUP plan to play football in the spring with a shortened regular season. Let the kids decide. If it's a baseball kid, let him play baseball. At this point it's not about what a kid does, it's about letting all kids experience their sport and having something to be excited about again. 6-8 game season, with playoffs. Not that I think they should pull the trigger early, just have a plan.

I agree they need to have some sort of contingency, but do not like this for a number of reasons. First, I do not like the idea of a player ever having to make a choice like this, even under extreme circumstances. Second, you're stretching a lot of coaches thin here too. Finally, I think the long term effects for the following season are too great. Kids need the year to properly recover, so doing this would land us on a shortened season the following fall as well.

I think we're potentially looking at no organized work in the summer, which I know for a lot of programs seems unthinkable. In reality however you do not NEED the summer months, many of us just think we do. Football has been played before with no summer workouts; it may have been since the 70s and under different circumstances (no global pandemic, kids were different, etc.) but it has happened.

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9 hours ago, Raven67 said:

I honestly think for the betterment of all student athletes, the IHSAA should have a BACKUP plan to play football in the spring with a shortened regular season. Let the kids decide. If it's a baseball kid, let him play baseball. At this point it's not about what a kid does, it's about letting all kids experience their sport and having something to be excited about again. 6-8 game season, with playoffs. Not that I think they should pull the trigger early, just have a plan.

The problem you may run into is with smaller schools.  There are some programs where the school does well enough in fielding teams for fall/spring, but if you had football competing with baseball ... two sports that require lots of kids and tends to have pretty decent cross-over at smaller schools ... you may be in a position where you can't field enough kids to do both of those in the same season.  As an example, it appears that about a third of North Decatur's baseball team also plays football ... and the football team won a sectional last season.  I'm not sure of the specific crossovers, but if you took 6-7 kids off of a 20-man baseball squad.  With that said, I do like the idea of some flexibility/creative thinking to see about getting the kids some experience/activity in their sport. 

Would something like a 7-on-7 "rec-type" opportunity be available?  There are plenty of 7-on-7 clinics out there, so there's definitely some experience in this area.  It wouldn't be official, in the sense that you'd have a full-blown IHSAA season and full-sanctioned tourney, but I wonder if schools might be interested in looking at something like that if it came down to an all-on-none situation.

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4 hours ago, wabashalwaysfights said:

I agree they need to have some sort of contingency, but do not like this for a number of reasons. First, I do not like the idea of a player ever having to make a choice like this, even under extreme circumstances. Second, you're stretching a lot of coaches thin here too. Finally, I think the long term effects for the following season are too great. Kids need the year to properly recover, so doing this would land us on a shortened season the following fall as well.

I think we're potentially looking at no organized work in the summer, which I know for a lot of programs seems unthinkable. In reality however you do not NEED the summer months, many of us just think we do. Football has been played before with no summer workouts; it may have been since the 70s and under different circumstances (no global pandemic, kids were different, etc.) but it has happened.

I am in no means saying that it is the right answer, I am brainstorming. I do however think that it is a REAL possibility that the season is going to not be on in the fall. NFL and NCAA are already mentioning it. Unless we find a treatment or a cure I dont think our social distancing restrictions will be lifted to more than 50 people in a place. Its a unprecedented time. I also do not think that schools will start next year on Elearning, I think they will postpone the starting of school and go straight through the following sumer if need be. Under normal circumstances I wouldnt want to make a kid choose either, or stretch coaching staffs, but this is different. Let a kid choose. It is not a normal time. If he is a baseball kid playing football, let him play baseball. If he is a football kid playing baseball, let him play football. Its a un-normal thing, because its an un-normal time and circumstance. I know at our school it would be about 7 kids in that spot out of 80 on the team. So we cant let 7 kids having to make a decision affect the other 73. There are some of those remaining 73 that would not even care about school if it wasnt for football.  Now I also thought about the small school thing. That one I am open to ideas lol. I understand that small schools have an issue fielding teams. Obviously we could let schools opt out and combine 1a and 2a. Or have an option for 7 man football at the 1a and 2a levels. I understand the logistics would be hard, but thats why I brought it up now. We should be thinking about it now.

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2 hours ago, Raven67 said:

I am in no means saying that it is the right answer, I am brainstorming. I do however think that it is a REAL possibility that the season is going to not be on in the fall. NFL and NCAA are already mentioning it. Unless we find a treatment or a cure I dont think our social distancing restrictions will be lifted to more than 50 people in a place. Its a unprecedented time. I also do not think that schools will start next year on Elearning, I think they will postpone the starting of school and go straight through the following sumer if need be. Under normal circumstances I wouldnt want to make a kid choose either, or stretch coaching staffs, but this is different. Let a kid choose. It is not a normal time. If he is a baseball kid playing football, let him play baseball. If he is a football kid playing baseball, let him play football. Its a un-normal thing, because its an un-normal time and circumstance. I know at our school it would be about 7 kids in that spot out of 80 on the team. So we cant let 7 kids having to make a decision affect the other 73. There are some of those remaining 73 that would not even care about school if it wasnt for football.  Now I also thought about the small school thing. That one I am open to ideas lol. I understand that small schools have an issue fielding teams. Obviously we could let schools opt out and combine 1a and 2a. Or have an option for 7 man football at the 1a and 2a levels. I understand the logistics would be hard, but thats why I brought it up now. We should be thinking about it now.

I think you are being a bit too drastic in your approach.  MLB is already kicking around a July 1 start date; albeit potentially in empty stadiums, but that still puts them well over a 50 person gathering even for the roster, coaching staff, umpires and TV crews.  The long and short is this; we're in early April and talking about August and September.  The way news happens these days we could literally be back to normal by June/July or be quarantined for a full calendar year. 

These are "un-normal" (I prefer unprecedented) but I think you have your answer with how the IHSAA handled the Spring sport season.  The very simple answer, unfortunately, is that if this continues into August, the IHSAA likely shortens the fall season by a month initially, then 6 weeks if needed, to then cancelling totally.   I would add too that in many ways, the IHSAA handled the Spring sport season better in my opinion than the NCAA did because they at least gave the situation some time to play out before completely axing things rather than cancelling immediately.  You can always postpone indefinitely before you cancel, you can never cancel then restart.  

As to 7 on 7, I think you run into similar issues.  As a former offensive linemen, my first thought is what about your offensive linemen?  Are you going to also have some kind of offensive lineman challenge along side it?  Sorry, there is no way you get any kind of extensive interest statewide.

And at the end of the day, Irishman has it right.  We should probably pump the breaks on anything major happening to the calendar until after we get into May.  To quote Tom Hanks from Apollo 13: "All right, there's a thousand things that have to happen in order.  We are on number eight. You're talking about number six-hundred and ninety-two."

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3 hours ago, wabashalwaysfights said:

I think you are being a bit too drastic in your approach.  MLB is already kicking around a July 1 start date; albeit potentially in empty stadiums, but that still puts them well over a 50 person gathering even for the roster, coaching staff, umpires and TV crews.  The long and short is this; we're in early April and talking about August and September.  The way news happens these days we could literally be back to normal by June/July or be quarantined for a full calendar year. 

These are "un-normal" (I prefer unprecedented) but I think you have your answer with how the IHSAA handled the Spring sport season.  The very simple answer, unfortunately, is that if this continues into August, the IHSAA likely shortens the fall season by a month initially, then 6 weeks if needed, to then cancelling totally.   I would add too that in many ways, the IHSAA handled the Spring sport season better in my opinion than the NCAA did because they at least gave the situation some time to play out before completely axing things rather than cancelling immediately.  You can always postpone indefinitely before you cancel, you can never cancel then restart.  

As to 7 on 7, I think you run into similar issues.  As a former offensive linemen, my first thought is what about your offensive linemen?  Are you going to also have some kind of offensive lineman challenge along side it?  Sorry, there is no way you get any kind of extensive interest statewide.

And at the end of the day, Irishman has it right.  We should probably pump the breaks on anything major happening to the calendar until after we get into May.  To quote Tom Hanks from Apollo 13: "All right, there's a thousand things that have to happen in order.  We are on number eight. You're talking about number six-hundred and ninety-two."

The easy thing to do would be to sit back and wait. The hard part would be to make a plan when it cancels. We should be working on a plan now.. Rumblings are NCAA is going to play in spring https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/football_ncaa/2020-college-football-season-reportedly-could-be-played-in-spring-2021/ar-BB12c8Gg

We can not be complacent to what's happening. I never said move it now, but to just start the conversation. I'm on the frontline of this, and it's not getting better anytime soon. Also I did not mean 7 on 7. I meant 7 man football, where you still play with I think 3 linemen. 

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From the article you posted:

"Even if the college football season could be moved to spring 2021, the consequences would likely be devastating for colleges across the country. As one coach mentioned, per The Athletic, schools might have to cut down to just football, basketball and four women’s sports due to budgetary restrictions."

So basically their damned if they do, damned if they don't. Again, moving an entire sport to a different season for,one year make absolutely zero logical sense in the long term at any level. The same coaches complaining now that they need 2 months to prepare would then complain the fall after "Springfest 2021" that their players had no time to recover. Stories like this, it would appear, are going to keep popping up in the absence of actual athletic events to cover. 

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IMO, as soon as the daily death rate in U.S flattens (guessing mid May) and then starts to decline (early June) I think we have 4-6 weeks of this and then it will start getting better.I can see things starting to try to get back to the new normal in 8-10 weeks, putting us towards the end of June. 

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Just now, psaboy said:

IMO, as soon as the daily death rate in U.S flattens (guessing mid May) and then starts to decline (early June) I think we have 4-6 weeks of this and then it will start getting better.I can see things starting to try to get back to the new normal in 8-10 weeks, putting us towards the end of June. 

I hope so.  All of the all experts can suck it!

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3 hours ago, psaboy said:

IMO, as soon as the daily death rate in U.S flattens (guessing mid May) and then starts to decline (early June) I think we have 4-6 weeks of this and then it will start getting better.I can see things starting to try to get back to the new normal in 8-10 weeks, putting us towards the end of June. 

I REALLY hope you are right. BUT, with not to get too far off topic; if there is no viable vaccine, the fact is the virus will always be around, just like many other viruses and strains of them. With no vaccine, we could easily see another outbreak of this as people start going back to work, school and practice, as well as gathering in large crowds. Not to create fear, but the fact is we will wake up to a different world once this outbreak has eased up or even passed. 

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7 hours ago, Irishman said:

I REALLY hope you are right. BUT, with not to get too far off topic; if there is no viable vaccine, the fact is the virus will always be around, just like many other viruses and strains of them. With no vaccine, we could easily see another outbreak of this as people start going back to work, school and practice, as well as gathering in large crowds. Not to create fear, but the fact is we will wake up to a different world once this outbreak has eased up or even passed. 

A vaccine anytime before next Spring is an unrealistic hope. Has nothing to do with the FDA. It takes at least that long to actually do the work. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-long-will-it-take-to-develop-a-coronavirus-vaccine

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8 hours ago, Irishman said:

I REALLY hope you are right. BUT, with not to get too far off topic; if there is no viable vaccine, the fact is the virus will always be around, just like many other viruses and strains of them. With no vaccine, we could easily see another outbreak of this as people start going back to work, school and practice, as well as gathering in large crowds. Not to create fear, but the fact is we will wake up to a different world once this outbreak has eased up or even passed. 

A vaccine is not a magic bullet though.  I haven't gotten a flu shot in years and have not had the flu *knocks on wood* for several years.  A co-worker of mine gets one every year and has had Influenza A twice this year.  

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1 hour ago, wabashalwaysfights said:

A vaccine is not a magic bullet though.  I haven't gotten a flu shot in years and have not had the flu *knocks on wood* for several years.  A co-worker of mine gets one every year and has had Influenza A twice this year.  

The comparison is inapposite. The “flu” is actually several different viruses. The annual flu shot actually addresses only 3-4 of those — the ones epidemiologists believe will be most prevalent. So, getting the flu after having a flu shot is not only possible, it’s relatively common. That would not happen with a COVID-19 vaccine, which would be targeted to that specific virus.

There is another reason the comparison is apples to oranges. COVID-19 is much more contagious than the flu. The degree of “contagiousness” of a virus is measured by its basic reproduction rate or RO (“R naught”): the average number of people who catch the disease from a single infected individual. The RO for most strains of influenza is about 1.3 i.e., flu victims infect 1.3 other people. They haven’t arrived at a final RO for COVID-19 yet, but it’s going to be somewhere between 2 and 3, meaning this virus is likely to be at least twice as contagious as the flu.

The third reason the comparison is unhelpful is that this disease is much more severe than the flu, potentially. The US death rate from influenza is about 0.1%. We don’t have a firm handle on the death rate from COVID-19 yet, but the published studies so far place it somewhere between 1.4% and 2.3%, meaning it’s 14 to 23 times more lethal than the flu. 

Looking at COVID-19 the same way you look at the flu is of very limited use, and potentially, very dangerous.

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10 hours ago, Irishman said:

I REALLY hope you are right. BUT, with not to get too far off topic; if there is no viable vaccine, the fact is the virus will always be around, just like many other viruses and strains of them. With no vaccine, we could easily see another outbreak of this as people start going back to work, school and practice, as well as gathering in large crowds. Not to create fear, but the fact is we will wake up to a different world once this outbreak has eased up or even passed. 

One wild card in this is I think this has been here in U.S. since November/December and we really didn't know it. The statistics really lag behind the reality of this outbreak IMO. I bet a lot of people have already built an "immunity" to this virus from undetected/unknown exposure. JMO

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37 minutes ago, psaboy said:

One wild card in this is I think this has been here in U.S. since November/December and we really didn't know it. The statistics really lag behind the reality of this outbreak IMO. I bet a lot of people have already built an "immunity" to this virus from undetected/unknown exposure. JMO

You may be right. There’s no way to know. But from a public health standpoint you have to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Think of it this way:

We have had a flu vaccine for many years, which does a very good job of preventing those 3-4 strains of the influenza virus that epidemiologists predict will pose the greatest risk that year. But it doesn’t prevent other strains of flu, and not everybody gets the shot. We haven’t practiced “social distancing,” or any of these other measures currently in force in order to address the flu. Every year in the US there are more than 30 million cases of the flu and a little over 30,000 deaths.

Obviously, we don’t have anything like enough data to make final projections yet. But based on what we know now, the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes the COVID-19 disease is at least twice as contagious as influenza and somewhere between 14 and 23 times as likely to kill you as the flu. There’s no vaccine and if we have one in the next 12 months it will be nothing short of a miracle. WAKE UP! Social distancing and sheltering in place-type restrictions are the only thing that is saving us from numbers like 50 million infected and a million deaths!

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3 hours ago, psaboy said:

One wild card in this is I think this has been here in U.S. since November/December and we really didn't know it. The statistics really lag behind the reality of this outbreak IMO. I bet a lot of people have already built an "immunity" to this virus from undetected/unknown exposure. JMO

You may be right. My only question about that is if did exist in November/December and nobody was practicing any social distancing how did it not spread like crazy? My guess is it may have been a less contagious and less deadly version. Whether that will be enough to create individual immunity experts probably don't know yet.

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3 hours ago, Raven67 said:

Bottom line is if there is not a viable successful treatment or vaccine. Football at all levels is out.. Bears just signed onto a "We are not playing" campaign. To try and help people stay in.

There is a 0% chance that an effective vaccine could be developed, mass produced, distributed, and administered in 2020.

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