Home Forums Long Island & Eastern New York Soccer Message Boards Roll Away The Stone Soccer News Nassau County postpones high school sports until 2021

By Roger Rubin and Gregg Sarra

Nassau County has postponed high school sports until 2021, but Suffolk County plans to try to play.

Nassau school superintendents voted to postpone high school sports until 2021 at an emergency meeting held Wednesday morning. The intention is to play all three sports seasons between January and June when, hopefully, the danger of COVID-19 transmission has decreased, there is a treatment or a vaccine is found. The seven-person committee of Section VIII officials voted unanimously to postpone.

“This decision comes from an abundance of caution and health and safety for our students,” said Hank Grishman, Jericho’s superintendent of schools. “No matter what procedures are put in place it’s just not safe to return to sports – there’s still too many unknowns with the virus. In my 50-year career in education nothing holds a candle to this. It’s all a bad dream.”

Section XI, the governing body for Suffolk high school athletics, held an executive board meeting Wednesday and voted to continue the state-wide plan to have lower-risk sports begin practice and play on Sept. 21. Section XI officials – including representation of superintendents – voted 12-0 to go forward, according to section executive director Tom Combs.

The Catholic high schools on Long Island have held meetings each week during the summer, according to NSCHSAA boys president Ralph Dalton. The Diocese of Rockville Centre principals board will ultimately decide what their schools will do.

The coronavirus pandemic halted high school sports across New York State in the second week of March and ultimately wiped out the entire 2020 spring sports season. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Monday issued guidance that would permit lower-risk sports – which he named as soccer, tennis, cross county track, field hockey and swimming – to begin on Sept. 21.

However, the Section VIII superintendents did not consider the current conditions safe enough. Nassau is the first of the state's 11 sections to announce a postponement.

Grishman said Tuesday this was one of three paths the superintendents could go down. The other choices were to postpone a decision and wait to see how students returning to classrooms would affect infection numbers or to go ahead with the Governor’s guidance.

“The timing of the Governor’s decision was too late and it put the superintendents and athletic community in immediate conflict,” said Ed Ramirez, the director of athletics for Baldwin Schools. “The athletic community wants sports to start and believes kids should have that experience. But to ask school administrators to put that together in such a short period of time, with so many ‘ifs’ still out there, is impossible. Had the Governor given that green light in early August, that would have given us time to prepare. You don’t just throw a switch and it all comes together. There are going to be protocols in place for every sport, including busing, locker rooms, athletic trainers, coaches, fan attendance – everything.”

“It’s the prudent thing to do – wait until January,” said Pat Pizzarelli, the executive director for Section VIII, which governs high school athletics in Nassau. “We know this will be a very unpopular decision, but it is the only one we can make at this time. We’re unanimous in our feeling that we’re just not ready. It’s just not time to allow kids to play sports. And my first and foremost concern is the safety of our student-athletes.”

“We are still learning about this virus and its effects, short and long term,” Pizzarelli added. “The science behind it continues to uncover scary truths, especially the potential for heart ailments and long-term heart damage for kids.”

Section XI, on the other hand, “has decided to keep going forward with a Sept. 21 start and assess new information as it becomes available,” Combs said. “Section VIII had to do what it felt was right for Section VIII. We know there are parents and students [in Suffolk] with varying opinions, but at this time we felt we should stay the course.”

“I give Nassau County and its administrators a lot of credit for being the first section to postpone,” Dalton said. “They are unified and were able to make a tough decision and made it for all the right reasons.”

The Section VIII plan calls for compacted seasons of approximately nine weeks, beginning with winter sports in January. Fall sports would be the second season and spring sports would follow. Tennis would be played in the spring.

In a New York State Public High School Athletic Association meeting of section directors on Tuesday, the topic of the January-to-June option was discussed and a number section leaders were considering it, according to several participants. Sections I, III, IV and IX were said to be considering it, in addition to the Long Island sections.

“Let’s have things calm down and we’ll run condensed seasons from January to June,” Grishman said. “We’ll have more information and a better idea how to keep kids safe.”

#Wimps

Does this decision affect Private Schools as well?

No. They have a seperate meeting today

“The timing of the Governor’s decision was too late and it put the superintendents and athletic community in immediate conflict,” said Ed Ramirez, the director of athletics for Baldwin Schools. “The athletic community wants sports to start and believes kids should have that experience. But to ask school administrators to put that together in such a short period of time, with so many ‘ifs’ still out there, is impossible. Had the Governor given that green light in early August, that would have given us time to prepare. You don’t just throw a switch and it all comes together. There are going to be protocols in place for every sport, including busing, locker rooms, athletic trainers, coaches, fan attendance – everything.”

What a cop-out. Be proactive. The opportunity to play presented itself and you were not prepared.

It's a really tough decision but I don't see this as a wimp decision. It's about liability and safety for the kids in Nassau, and I soon suspect Suffolk, are responsible for. Perhaps if we weren't such a litigious society and parents didn't sue every time a kid got a pimple on their a** they would allow them to play. In all seriousness, no school district wants to be the one where a kid gets Covid and dies. My personal opinion is they can play if they do it right and put proper protocols in place but that really doesn't matter at this point.

Doom and gloom ny liberal BS

What is the difference between every club sport from soccer baseball softball and lax playing since most kids playing club sports play on school teams and what about all the kids that play two sports one in fall and spring Nassau totally unprepared for this

Everyone is afraid of liability. Heirarchy is important
1.No Colleges are playing
2. No High Schools are playing
3. Do we really think travel leagues will lead the way and begin play??? After a couple of positive weeks this returns the uncertainty

So Travel Club League representative a question: colleges thought it was unsafe, the nassau schools thought it was unsafe, but you and your league thought it was safe? no further questions

Nassau postpones HS sports; Suffolk will try to play....

"We know there are parents and students with varying opinions, but at this time we felt we should stay the course," Suffolk's executive director of HS sports Tom Combs said.

Seriously, this was a “surprise” to this Ramirez clown? How does this guy have a job? Why hasn’t there been planning by schools and superintendents for the past few months? Is he saying NOW they will start planning, hoping to be ready in January??? In the middle of a flu season and who knows what else? Youre also putting kids in jeopardy by condensing and fast tracking seasons with overlap.

School buses!

Section XI, the governing body for Suffolk high school athletics, held an executive board meeting Wednesday and voted to continue the state-wide plan to have lower-risk sports begin practice and play on Sep. 21. Section XI officials – including representation of superintendents – voted 12-0 to go forward, according to section executive director Tom Combs.

The Catholic high schools on Long Island have held meetings each week during the summer, according to NSCHSAA boys president Ralph Dalton. The Diocese of Rockville Centre principals board will ultimately decide what their schools will do.

The fact that they say they didn’t have enough time to come up with a plan is absurd. They had since March to sketch something out so when a decision was made the ground work would have been laid. Blaming Cuomo (who I don’t typically defend) is a cop-out.

By the way, sports have been back on LI for a few months and have been ramping up. Another reason they should have been planning for this.

Hold these (not so) superintendents accountable at your next chance.

Hope the private schools have a better outcome

Clubs don't have the same issues with kids having to take buses from schools, don't have locker rooms to deal with, don't have teachers unions to worry about, etc.

Disappointing to say the least. Nobody is willing to make a decision. Pro and college sports are different. Stadiums are packed with.people. I get that. But a varsity soccer or tennis match, with 15 spectators and players and coaches following approved social distance guidelines wont work? Come on, really!! Lets see, thousands of people visit supermarkets, walmart, target, etc and we are keeping the numbers down. We can't do that for sport? It's a cop out and a disservice to the communities they serve.

My son will transfer to a Suffolk school.

It is not about safety of students, it is once again about the inability and incompetence of school officials. They had all summer to put contingency plans in place as they waited for the Governor. But no, yet again they wait and wait and then cancel because they don’t have enough time to get a plan together and implemented. It is the same exact thing with the return to school plans, half of it makes zero sense and is not well thought out. If they were employed by a company they would have been fired a long time ago, but not with schools. We keep paying school taxes to employ a bunch of incompetent people.

I take my kid in my car to the field for a club game and then go straight home after the game ends. School is very different. Think about it

Colleges have International Players so i'm sure this has something to do with that decision.
Public High Schools are not playing. Private Schools hopefully won't follow liberal agenda.
Travel Leagues have been playing tournaments and will hopefully have a fall season. No further answers.

Does you kid hang out with kids from school and those kids hang out with other kids and I’m sure none of them wear masks think about it

Question if nassau schools say no sports will they grant field permits to LIJSL and other clubs to play soccer?

My question is will schools allow outside sports on their fields? What is effect on LIJSL? Did they get the alignments out yet? Is season happening? I know schedules for EDP are already in clubs hands and NYCSL has the alignments out with a start date. Could this cause influx of town players to private clubs with fields?

I get the sense those parents applauding this decision have children without a social life. So for them, it's no big deal.

Yes. the superintendents are worried about liability and it being on them if there is a serious case , death or major outbreak in their district. Again, they were afraid that a decision to cancel would be unpopular and didn't want the backlash for cancelling fall sports so they were hoping and praying Cuomo cancelled it so it wouldn't be on them. They were wrong!

Can you spell P-O-L-I-T-I-C-S?