Melissa Voss | Editor
With coronavirus still present within the state, schools opening back up for the new school year leaves an open question: what will happen with fall sports and activities? On Wednesday, July 22, the South Dakota High School Activities Association board of directors (SDHSAA BOD) stated that fall sports and activates will be on this year and released to the public their plan to keep athletes, performers, coaches, referees, and spectators safe.
The SDHSAA categorized each sport and activity within three levels of potential risk: low contact/risk, moderate contact/risk, and high contact/risk. Low contact/risk activities include golf, tennis, cross country, journalism, and oral interp; medium contact/risk activities include soccer and volleyball, and high contact/risk activities include football competitive cheer, competitive dance, all-state chorus and orchestra.
Within the plan to continue fall sports, the SDHSAA implemented seven principles: safety, keeping students active and involved, screening procedures, protocol for confirmed close contact and positive cases, change in SDHSAA policies, benchmarks for re-evaluation, and further guidance toward social distancing and proper hygiene.
Safety, screening, confirmed and positive cases, and benchmarks for re-evaluation all appeal to the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 and what procedures the school and attendees of events must follow in the scenario a COVID-19 case is confirmed from an activity or event. Prior to each event, all rostered individuals will be screened daily for indicators of COVID-19. According to the SDHSAA July agenda, individuals with positive responses are not automatically put on a 14-day self-quarantine period, but individuals with positive responses who refuse to be evaluated by medical personal and provide that notification to the school “must sit out and monitor for symptoms for 14 days from the onset of symptoms to ensure recovery.”
In the event that there is a confirmed case from the South Dakota Department of Health that there were positive cases and confirmed close contact, the individual must self-quarantine for 10 days from the first onset symptoms and must be fever free for 24 hours without medication. Those severely or critically ill individuals and/or those immunocompromised must wait 20 days from the first onset symptoms and be fever free for 24 hours without medication. Any individual is required to have a physician complete a SDHSAA COVID Return to Play form before returning to their activity.
For spectating events, SDHSAA proposed four tiers of fan attendance depending on the district/county’s active case and hospitalization count. Open attendance is allowed with steadily decreasing rates of active cases, student body and parents only attendance occurs during slow increase of cases, student body or parents only takes place if there is a steady increase of new cases due to potential exposures in “large communal settings,” and no fan attendance happens when there is a sharp increase of active cases and communal settings are deemed unsafe due to potential exposure. If attendance is limited, SDHSAA recommends schools using either a pass system to control attendance sizes.
Each fall activity was given modifications to their rules, each level as mandatory, optional and impermissible. Although each sport has their own sanctioned rules based on the individualistic nature of the sport or activity, common mandatory themes that ran about all rule modifications included no awards ceremonies, no common distribution of water accessible to multiple parties, expansion of team benches to promote social distancing between players, regular cleaning of frequently touched areas, limited or no spectator access to athletes, and limited number of participants for convention areas. The use of masks as a mandatory, optional, or impermissible modification depends on the activity.
As for local schools within the county, each school is preparing to take on the responsibility to have all activities be safe as possible for all parties.
Andrea Johnson, activities director and dean of students at West Central, states, “West Central is excited to begin the school year as normal as possible. This includes the participation in fall activities. All staff and administration are working diligently to provide students the safest environment for learning and growing both in and out of the classroom. We are taking the Department of Education (DOE), Department of Health (DOH), the Center of Disease Control (CDC), and/or SDHSAA guidelines into consideration for every decision being made. It is our ultimate goal to provide students the education and experience they would normally have in school while keeping everyone as safe as possible.”
Eric Smart, activities director of Tri-Valley, states that he is grateful for the direction that the SDHSAA is giving South Dakota schools, but he is also aware that anything is possible in this given situation.
“After the SDHSAA BOD meeting and decision to continue with fall sports, I began meeting with other conference athletic directors regarding what the SDHSAA guidelines look like in our area. As everyone knows, the landscape changes almost daily and our canned line is, “it’s a fluid situation.” Our goal is to make sure we are all implementing the same guidelines even though two schools may be in different situations at any given moment. The SDHSAA is in a tough position as this situation affects schools differently based on geographic location. All of us want definite answers to many questions we have with the start of school and athletics; however, frustratingly, it’s not possible because of how fast everything can change. My hope is we’ll be able to start and finish the athletic season with little restrictions on players and fans as currently planned,” Smart says.