Hope for a 2020 spring sports season was lost last week when the
That allowed school administrators, coaches and athletes to begin to look at what comes next.
“Fall schedules are set,” said Durango School District 9-R athletic director Ryan Knorr. “I am planning as if it’s going to be normal and to try to have all of our ducks in a row for that.”
The prospect of school sports resuming in the fall with some form of summer practices and camps largely will depend on the availability of COVID-19 testing. Of course, a full return to normalcy in the world, including sports, will require a vaccine.
But there is hope for Friday nights filled with high school football, for weeknights and Saturday mornings with parks and stadiums full of young athletes engaged in competition. Athletes, coaches and parents all seek that outlet and are no doubt missing it this spring as summer quickly approaches.
But an all-out dive into fall sports as normal seems unlikely at best. If it is possible large gatherings of more than 250 people won’t be allowed in Colorado through Labor Day on Sept. 7, it’s also possible at least two weeks of high school football could look a bit different with a cap on fan attendance.
“We will have to problem solve along the way,” Knorr said. “The biggest challenge I foresee, and hopefully this is the extent of it, is handling crowd sizes. How do we accommodate that safely? But if we are practicing, meeting with kids, competing and playing other teams, hopefully dealing with attendance is the biggest thing we have to accommodate.”
Locally, Durango High School is scheduled to play on the road the first two weeks of the regular season through a Sept. 11 date against rival Montrose. Fort Lewis College isn’t slated to have a home football game until Sept. 26 against Western Colorado after a Week 1 opener at Division I FCS University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and a Sept. 19 trip to Golden to face Colorado School of Mines in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference opener.
FLC men’s soccer, though, is scheduled to host matches Sept. 3 and Sept. 6, and the women are to host a game Sept. 5.
For DHS, the biggest question may relate to interstate travel and potential CHSAA limitations on teams traveling out of state for competition. That would affect every Four Corners school in Colorado that routinely schedules opponents from New Mexico and Utah to ease the financial and time investments in playing games further away from the region.
“We are working to make sure our games with New Mexico are still going to be on as usual,” Knorr said. “There is talk some out-of-state travel will be in question with this. I hope schools in bordering towns are an exception. The word from CHSAA is that they will work with schools like us that have a relationship with schools just across the border. But with that, we hope New Mexico feels the same way, too. If CHSAA approves it but New Mexico doesn’t, we will have a lot of holes to fill on the schedule.”
Athletes also will have some tough decisions to make. Particularly baseball players who lost their spring season and are now in jeopardy of losing much of the summer season with clubs and travel teams. Amateur baseball has increasingly become a fall sport with showcases and tournaments across the Southwest lasting late into October.
DHS junior Gage Mestas, who aimed to rely heavily on his performance in the spring high school season as well as summer tournaments to display his talent to college coaches ahead of his senior year, said he may have to make some tough decisions this fall. He is set to be one of the top wide receivers, defensive backs and special teams players on a DHS football team that aims to make a deep run in the Class 3A state playoffs behind star quarterback Jordan Woolverton. Mestas has been Woolverton’s go-to receiver since elementary school.
If the fall becomes loaded with baseball activities, he will have schedule conflicts.
“I need summer ball if I am going to do anything for colleges,” Mestas said. “It’s a big opportunity for me. I want to play college baseball. If summer ball falls through, that’s going to be tough. If there is baseball in the fall, that’s a sacrifice I’m going to have to be willing to make. I will have to sacrifice football time for baseball if I have to go to a showcase or something. I’m willing to take that opportunity, and I know a lot of teammates will do the same. We all want to go far in baseball at the next level, so if we have the opportunity to do it during football season, we will take it.”
Knorr said he remains optimistic sports will be able to resume in July with clinics and offseason programs. The solace he takes is that every team at every school faces the same plight and no competitive advantage will be gained by any other school in the state during the spring.
Still, he knows some local agencies and school districts will handle reopening different than others, as evident this week with some counties continuing stay-at-home orders longer than Gov. Jared Polis’ mandate, which began the process of being lifted Monday. A day later, San Juan Basin Public Health announced La Plata County wouldn’t begin to ease into non-essential business reopening until May 8, largely because of the county’s proximity to northern New Mexico communities that have been hit much harder by the virus than Southwest Colorado.
“Local governments and health agencies are working with schools to determine the best time to do begin face-to-face practice, basically,” Knorr said. “We are going to need to make decisions with our superintendent and the local health authorities to determine what we think is best. CHSAA is not going to police what happens during the summer after June 1, so it is going to be determined at the local level.”
No matter what sports look like when they return – whether with pep bands, cheerleaders and full stadiums or with no fans or cheer support at all – there will be the opportunity to do what sports so often have done in the past: heal.
“If we get football going and with the potential we have this year, if it all falls into line, I see the football program helping and healing this fall,” said DHS offensive coordinator Ryan Woolverton. “It will be a good rallying point for the whole community to come together. I’m trying to focus on that.”
Nobody will need that opportunity more than the athletes and coaches, themselves.
“This is a nightmare right now,” Mestas said. “Being able to get back on the field, that will be huge. We want to make memories, play with our hometown boys again and give people something to cheer for. It’s what everyone wants.”
John Livingston is the sports editor of The Durango Herald. He can be reached at 375-4514 or jlivingston@durangoherald.com. Follow him on Twitter @jlivi2.
