Here’s what to know about the high school winter sports season in Centre County
The 2020-21 winter high school sports season has arrived after a brief delay, and all six Centre County schools are set to participate. The PIAA allowed teams to resume practice Monday with at least 10 days of practice required before participation.
With some teams having started practice prior to Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration’s shutdown of sports in December, some teams will begin competition as early as this week, as long as a minimum of four practices take place — even if a team practiced six or more times prior to the halt in December.
“The board felt it was important to establish a common theme for practices, where some schools started, some did not and some had a partial start,” PIAA President Frank Majikes said in a release. “This will give member schools direction to return to competition on January 4, 2021 per the governor’s order.”
The Mountain League, which houses four Centre County schools — Bald Eagle Area, Bellefonte, Penns Valley and Philipsburg-Osceola — will maintain the same health and safety protocols as its member schools put in place for fall sports, with a change in rules on spectators.
The league will only have fans from home teams at games, with a limit on how many can attend due to the current restrictions put in place by the governor’s office. The maximum allowable capacity under the states guidelines is 10% for a venue that can fit 2,000 or fewer people.
Each home student — whether that’s a player, manager or coach — will be given two tickets to give to immediate family members, according to Mountain League President and BEA AD Doug Dyke. Once the team’s match is over, those in attendance will be asked to leave to limit crowd sizes.
The old protocols that will stay in place include the requirement of temperature checks and sign-up sheets for contract-tracing purposes in order to attend, along with the practicing social distancing when possible.
For the time being, there will be no admission charge to attend Mountain League games and all home teams are set to stream their games online.
State College enacted a plan for winter and spring athletics that includes full competition with a limited schedule when the district is in practicing in-person learning and no competition outside of the district for contact sports when the school is in fully remote status.
Those contact sports include ice hockey, field hockey, girls’ lacrosse, rugby, wrestling, competitive cheer, boys’ lacrosse and boys’ volleyball. That list of sports would be limited to intrasquad scrimmages.
All other sports will be allowed to continue competition with other school districts if State College is fully remote.
State High will follow the state’s recommendations for spectators with limits on the number of attendees based on the capacity of the venue. All attendees will be required to wear masks and practice social distancing to help prevent the potential spread of COVID-19.
Postseasons will also look different this winter. As in the fall with sports such as volleyball, only district champions will move on to PIAA playoffs for girls’ and boys’ basketball. There will also be less state qualifiers for swimming and wrestling.
Only district champions will advance to PIAAs for the wrestling team dual championships, and an extra “super regional” round will be added to the individual championships postseason, limiting the PIAA qualifiers to eight per weight.
The individual championships will take place in Hershey on March 12-13, and the team championships will take place after that at a date yet to be determined.
