As the suspending of the Miami Marlins’ season reminded us all this week, the COVID-19 pandemic is still very much with us — and it’s bound to make an impact as schools reopen and fall sports teams prepare to begin their seasons.
With girls golf teams slated to start official practices on Friday and the rest of their fall counterparts to follow on Monday, we spoke with incoming IHSAA commissioner Paul Neidig on Wednesday morning to see where he stands heading into what figures to be a very eventful 2020-21 school year.
(NOTE: “Eventful” might be an understatement. In the hours after this interview took place on Wednesday, Illinois moved its football, soccer and volleyball seasons to the spring, and the Marion County Health Department briefly moved to shut down those same sports at all Indianapolis schools until Oct. 1 — only to reverse course on that decision just hours later.)
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Q: First off, I can’t say that I envy the position that you’ve been put into here. Could you have picked a worse time to be stepping into this job?
A: I’m not really thinking about it that way. Everybody in the country’s dealing with this; all of our schools are, every state association. I don’t control timing of when these things happen — the only thing I control is how I can manage and how I can help our member schools get prepared and get back to playing sports.
Q: We’ve seen outbreaks even in relatively controlled situations, first during college football workouts and then this week with the Marlins. There is no bubble at the high school level — how does this possibly work, and what contingency plans are there in the event that it doesn’t?
A: Everything that we’re doing right now is focused on playing this fall. One of the things that we have an opportunity to learn from here, our friends in Iowa have been playing all summer long — their baseball and softball tournaments, actually, are completing this weekend. So they’ve returned, and we’ve been able to get some information from them, and I think we can anticipate what may come based on what they’re experiencing.
We knew when we started back that there were going to be cases of COVID, there were going to be exposures and there will be quarantines, and we’ve experienced that at this point. And as we get to the fall, we fully believe that there’s going to be some quarantines of some student-athletes and maybe some coaches along the way — even kids that just attend the regular school day. But I think the schools’ protocols are solid; I think they’ll follow those, and we’ll just continue to manage through this on a case-by-case, day-by-day basis.
Q: As such cases come up, do you anticipate situations where teams that do experience outbreaks might have to forfeit some games or matches during the season?
A: I absolutely think that’s a scenario. Now, if a team cannot play because of quarantine, because of COVID, we would not require a team to forfeit a contest. It would simply become a no contest, and there would be no winner and loser. And hopefully, once the quarantine is over, they’d be right back participating with us.
The bad side of the whole thing is if we get to the tournament series and a team is quarantined — they would not be able to participate in the tournament series. And that’s happened in Iowa. We understood that that was a possibility, and it’s just not an option (to postpone a game). You take a football tournament, we play every week, and if you take a week off — it’s just not an option for us to be able to do that.
But the great thing about Indiana schools is Midwest values, and they understand that. They don’t have to like it, but they also understand it, and we’re going to move on.
Q: Given how quickly the state pumped the brakes in March, why is there seemingly no inclination to do the same now, even with numbers peaking and mass gatherings at schools almost certain to make outbreaks more likely?
A: I think we were dealing with something that was unknown. If you go back to March, there was certainly very little information on treatment for the disease, how it transmitted person to person. It was just such a new thing, you had to shut things down because there were too many unknowns and you had to continue to learn.
I understand the seriousness of this virus, and the need to take it seriously, but you have to with the flu also. I think our information is different now. I think there’s safety protocols, and that’s why we’re able to move forward now; we weren’t ready to in March when we were simply learning about the virus.
Q: I saw the Cliff’s Notes version of the message you sent to ADs (Wednesday) morning, which alluded to potential limits on sideline personnel and such. Do you plan to institute any mandates or guidelines for schools to follow regarding spectators, or will that all have to be decided locally?
A: I think a lot of that is decided locally. What we’re working on is information on rules modifications to keep kids safe; for instance, spreading out on the sideline, expanding the box on the football sideline so kids can socially distance along the sidelines.
The capacity of venues is still yet to be determined. We’re watching that, and we know what the governor’s current orders are under (Phase) 4.5, and we’ll just have to continue to watch that and make a determination as we get closer to the contest season.
Q: Other states have made moves toward an abbreviated football season, swapping fall and spring sports, or moving fall sports to the spring. Have any of those been up for serious discussion?
A: I do get a significant number of questions on switching the fall and the spring; I have a pretty serious concern with that. One — and I think the majority of this is really a football question when it comes to me — I’ve not seen any information on the safety of completing a complete football program or season in the spring and then turning right around and contesting another football season in fall, with just a month or six weeks rest between the two. There’s a safety aspect with football when it comes to that.
If we would lose the fall — if for some reason it became necessary to shut the fall down and we moved baseball and softball to the fall, football to the spring, we would have our baseball programs losing two seasons in a row. And for those kids that have baseball as a passion, I don’t know that that’s the right thing to do for kids who just lost a season the previous year.
The other side of that is, a lot of our schools could not field complete teams if we had football, baseball and track and field all contested at the same time of the year. There’s not a perfect solution here, but when we’re dealing with the pandemic, the virus, there’s not been any perfect answers yet, either. So all we can do is just continue to make the best decisions we can.
Q: You’ve made no secret about the fact that the IHSAA’s financial well-being would be jeopardized if there’s no football tournament. Does that have to happen this fall, or could you survive a move to the spring?
A: The good thing is that the IHSAA, the leaders before myself, before commissioner (Bobby) Cox, they worked hard to provide some stability financially for the organization in a situation such as this. We’re certainly not in the same place that many of my counterparts are in other state associations. But if we don’t contest the football season, it would not look exactly the same around here the rest of the year. We’d have to make some serious decisions, and cuts would be a possibility there.
Q: Barring an order from the governor or the state department of education that shuts down schools again, is there any scenario that would lead you to move or cancel the fall season? Where is the tipping point if it comes down to a choice between health concerns and financial concerns?
A: One thing we always have to remember, our sport model is dependent upon school and education continuing. That’s first and foremost, and as long are kids are back in buildings and they’re going to school, I think we continue to offer after-school programming or extracurricular programming in what we do.
We’re moving forward. We’re prepared, and if it is shut down, it’ll be a decision that’s made from the governor’s office, the Department of Education, the Indiana High School Athletic Association, the local health departments — we don’t have the monopoly there. We’re certainly going to be a partner in that decision.
