By Derek Wilson
Marinscope
Depending on what happens in the next couple weeks, high school students could be cheering on their sports teams in mid-February.
If State and County health officials give high schools the go-ahead, local teams will return to competition for the first time in almost a year. The North Coast Section announced sports will begin competition in tiers as Marin County changes tiers. The sports in the purple tier — the first group expected to be allowed to compete — include sports that generally include more distance between athletes: cross country, golf, tennis, track and field, and swimming and diving.
If and when Marin County advances to the red tier, baseball, softball, girls lacrosse and field hockey could be back in action. The orange tier brings football, boys lacrosse, soccer, volleyball, water polo and badminton. Finally, the yellow tier includes competitive cheerleading, basketball and wrestling.
There are strict rules proposed for the return to action: Teams will not be allowed to hold official practices or compete before February 1; Student-athletes can participate in only one sport at a time; Competition can not begin until local stay-at-home orders have been lifted; All participants must follow safety guidelines, including social distancing and wearing masks.
In a message to NCS member schools on January 14, commissioner Pat Cruickshank wrote, “The leadership of the North Coast Section believes that this revised schedule best fits the needs of our member schools. It is our hope that this will allow all our student-athletes the opportunity to participate in the sports that they are so passionate about, even in this year of uncertainty and great sacrifice!”
San Marin High School director of athletics Michele Brovelli Smith responded: “Even with the new information that was announced yesterday from CIF, we are in a holding pattern in Marin. We will have to wait and see what our county allows us to do. Our goal is to get our student-athletes back on the playing field as soon as we can as long as it is safe to do so.”
By the time basketball and football teams start the season in 2021, it will have been nearly a full calendar year since some teams last played. The Branson girls and San Domenico boys basketball squads were poised to play for the CIF State Division V championships on the morning of March 13, 2020 in Sacramento, but only hours before tipoff the decision was made to cancel the finals when a lockdown was mandated to try to stem the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
The high school football season would normally start in August, but the 2020 season has been pushed back by nearly six months already. The last time any Marin County high school football teams competed was in November 2019.
The 2020 spring sports season never did get moving. Baseball and softball teams managed to squeeze in about six games before the rest of the season was postponed, and eventually cancelled.
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