Current Situation
As more counties in the state move to green it is important to note that the spread of COVID19 is still quite prevalent. The original recommendations from the state to move into the “yellow” phase was a county to have no more than 50 new cases over 14 days per 100k population. What does that mean for the largest counties in Central PA?
Lanc Co – 550k (275 new cases over 14 days)
York Co – 450k (225 new cases over 14 days)
Berks Co – 420k (210 new cases over 14 days)
Lancaster County is the largest county in District III. A look at Lancaster General Health’s (LGH) COVID-19 dashboard (found at lghealth.org) has consistently shown 14 day cumulative new positive cases to be in the 325-375 range. This data is only for patients tested through a LGH facility. In other words, the total number of net new cases in Lancaster County is higher than what LGH is showing. As of June 13, LGH is showing 340 new positives over 14 days.
While data may still be trending above the 50 new cases per 100k population target, the trend lines have been decreasing. We are >14 days out from Memorial Day and the numbers did not spike, which is positive. Recent protests will be another test to net new case totals. The next 10-14 days will be telling. Summer vacations and counties opening to “green” will yet be another test. All told, the state should have more confidence about our stability of managing the disease heading into the first week of official practice August 17th. If we see no spikes over the next 10 weeks we should all feel a bit relieved.
Return to Play (RTP) Guidelines
The state and other national organizations have released some guidelines for return to play. Here are the highlights from the PA Department of Health, PA Department of Education, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Federation of High Schools (NFHS):
⁃ Each school in the yellow and green phase needs to come up with their own RTP guidelines; these do not need to be approved by the state.
⁃ Gathering limits for counties in yellow = 25 or less; green = 250 or less.
⁃ During the yellow and green phases of reopening, sports-related activities at the PK-12 level are limited to student athletes, coaches, officials, and staff only. The addition of visitors and spectators will be contingent upon future health conditions within the state and local communities. Media will likely be approved before spectators.
⁃ Cycling back and forth between less restrictive to more restrictive designations may occur as public health indicators improve or worsen. So, even if you are green today doesn’t guarantee your county will be green during the season.
⁃ The NFHS risk-stratified sports based on the following rationale: Decreasing potential exposure to respiratory droplets is the guiding principle behind social distancing and the use of face coverings. XC is classified as low-risk.
The NFHS provided some specific RTP recommendations and describes 3 different phases.
Phase 1 Highlights:
⁃ All coaches and students should be screened for signs/symptoms of COVID-19 prior to a workout. Screening includes a temperature check. Any person with positive symptoms are not allowed to participate. Logs should be kept of this daily screening.
⁃ Up to 10 athletes may gather indoors or outdoors for practice
⁃ Workouts should be conducted in “pods” of students with the same 5-10 students always working out together. Smaller pods can be utilized for weight training. Equipment must be cleaned after each individual use.
⁃ There must be a minimum distance of 6 feet between each individual at all times.
⁃ Runners should maintain the recommended 6 feet of distancing between individuals
⁃ Hand sanitizer should be plentiful at all contests and practices.
⁃ All students shall bring their own water bottle. Water bottles must not be shared.
⁃ Hydration stations (water cows, water trough, water fountains, etc.) should not be utilized.
Phase 2 Highlights:
⁃ All coaches and students should be screened for signs/symptoms of COVID-19 prior to a workout. Screening includes a temperature check. Any person with positive symptoms are not allowed to participate. Logs should be kept of screening.
⁃ Up to 50 athletes may gather outdoors for practice
⁃ Workouts should be conducted in “pods” of students with the same 5-10 students always working out together. Smaller pods can be utilized for weight training. Equipment must be cleaned after each individual use.
⁃ There must be a minimum distance of 6 feet between each individual at all times.
⁃ Runners should maintain the recommended 6 feet of distancing between individuals
⁃ Hand sanitizer should be plentiful at all contests and practices.
⁃ Lower risk sports practices and competitions may resume
⁃ All students shall bring their own water bottle. Water bottles must not be shared.
⁃ Hydration stations (water cows, water trough, water fountains, etc.) should not be utilized.
Phase 3 Highlights:
⁃ Any person who has had a fever or cold symptoms in the previous 24 hours should not be allowed to take part in workouts and should contact his or her primary care provider or other appropriate health- care professional. (No mention of the need to continue thermal temperature screening)
⁃ A record should be kept of all individuals present for practice.
⁃ Gathering sizes of up to 50 individuals, indoors or outdoors.
⁃ When not directly participating in practices or contests, care should be taken to maintain a minimum distance of 3 to 6 feet between each individual.
⁃ Hand sanitizer should be plentiful at all contests and practices.
⁃ All students shall bring their own water bottle. Water bottles must not be shared.
⁃ Hydration stations (water cows, water trough, water fountains, etc.) may be utilized but must be cleaned after every practice/contest.
The NFHS has set additional guidelines specific to return to play for XC and other “low-risk” sports including:
⁃ In the absence of guidelines to the contrary, we recommend that cloth face coverings be worn by students during Phases 1 and 2; however, exceptions are swimming, distance running or other high intensity aerobic activity.
Other recommendations from the NFHS which would be relevant to XC:
⁃ Schools must consider social distancing requirements when scheduling contests and events for the fall. Social distancing (as required by state or local health department) will need to be maintained on buses/vans. Thus, multiple buses/vans and/or parental/guardian transportation will likely be needed.
⁃ Appropriate social distancing will need to be maintained on sidelines/bench during contests and events. Consider using tape or paint as a guide for students and coaches.
⁃ Who should be allowed at events? Group people into tiers from essential to non-essential and decide which tiers will be allowed at an event:
Tier 1 (Essential): Athletes, coaches, officials, event staff, medical staff, security
Tier 2 (Preferred): Media
Tier 3 (Non-essential): Spectators, vendors
(Only Tier 1 and 2 personnel will be allowed to attend events until state/local health departments lift restrictions on mass gatherings.)
Common Sense Questions for XC
With all of this knowledge the experts have given, what are the common sense questions that need to be addressed for XC?
1. How do you travel to and from meets? Buses or vans with numerous kids and coaches present is not ideal. Sharing circulating air for any period of time is less than ideal. Potential solution(s) – personal transportation to and from venues, which may mean meet times and days meets are held need to change. It is unlikely personal transportation works for meets held before 5p. What if all meets were held on Saturdays throughout the fall? What if 4-5 teams within a given league or conference competed against each other per regular season meet to limit the number of contests?
2. How to manage the starting line? Once a race is 0.25-0.50 miles in, the number of kids within 6 feet of each other diminishes, but the starting line, especially at large invitationals or post-season events, is problematic and the highest risk for XC runners. Potential solution(s) – Could we see masks being required early in races with a check-point when they could be removed? Could we stagger starts such that the team’s #1 and #2 runners start, and then some period later (30-60s) the team’s #3 and #4 runners start, etc…? Another potential staggered start solution could be to race a team at a time. The team that trains together, races together. Could team A’s 7 varsity runners start, then team B’s, etc… Team members have likely already been training together, so is there any more risk in having them start a race together? The challenge with staggering starts is that you would need to consider if any part of a XC course crosses which could lead to collisions. Another likely scenario is reducing the number of teams and/or competitors at any event. The PIAA recently went to 3 classifications for XC which helps to better manage districts and states. Could we temporarily re-classify XC into more than 3 classifications and run championship events over 2 or 3 days? Or do you race “heat-style” and allow your top 10 ranked teams and top 10 individual qualifiers in the “fast heat” then race the next 10 ranked teams and next 10 individual qualifiers in a separate heat, etc…This would require the PIAA to somehow rank teams throughout the year. This is possible, but would also likely be highly political. I advocated last year for “at-large” qualifiers for the state meet, both team and individual “at-large” qualifiers. I think this makes even more sense this season. Another possible solution would be to allow only individual qualifiers into states (more on that later).
3. How will those athletes not at school make it to practice? If school goes back in session, which the PA Dept of Education says will happen, it will not look like it has in the past. Some kids will be present some days, but not other days. Fortunately for XC this isn’t a huge problem. Potential solution – Coaches can send workouts to athletes to be done in private.
4. If a member of your team tests positive, do you need to self-quarantine all members of the team for 14 days? This is a tough scenario and I do not have an answer for. Schools will need policies in place to address this. This may not be an issue during the regular season, but if you quarantined at a qualifying meet you would fail to advance for any future competition.
5. What happens in a particular county sees a spike in cases and revert back to “yellow” or “red”? Will those teams be able to travel to different counties to compete? Anyone in red will likely not be allowed to travel to another county to compete.
Personal Thoughts and Recommendations for XC
1. Thermal temperature screening and simple health questions should be mandatory before any practice and competition (see NFHS log above). Each school needs to purchase an appropriate number of thermal temperature devices. False positives are possible, so anyone testing over 100 degrees should be allowed to sit in the shade for 5-10 minutes and be re-tested before being excused from practice or a meet.
2. Limit the number of athletes during training by creating pods of no more than 10 individuals at a time, at least in the early going.
3. Consider moving regular season meets to Saturday to increase the likelihood student athletes can be safely transported to and from meets by those they shelter with. Avoid group bus or van travel.
4. Increase the number of teams competing at any regular season event to minimize the total number of races needed to be conducted during the season.
5. Run Jr High and High School meets on different days to reduce group size. You could reduce risk further by then holding a Varsity and JV race. This may prove beneficial early in the season.
6. Limit the number of athletes at a starting line. Even in the state’s green phase, only 250 individuals can be congregated in one place at one time. This poses a challenge for invitationals and post-season contests. I wouldn’t be surprised if in-season invitationals are cancelled this season. I also believe that there needs to be a qualifying process determined by league for post-season championships. For example, maybe only teams with a .500 record are permitted to compete in a league’s championship event. Coaches could then select an additional number of individual qualifiers from non-qualifying teams to compete. Another option could be league championships broken-out by A/AA and AAA classifications to limit the number of athletes per race. For districts, each league gets a certain number of automatic team and individual qualifiers (similar to the methodology to get into states). I STRONGLY advocate for “at-large” selections into the district meet under this scenario. I still STRONGLY believe the PIAA should adopt this for the state meet. Another potential solution is to remove team qualification from post-season competition and go strictly off of individual qualification. Team champions could still be crowned off a point system where highest point total wins. For example, an individual winner may score 50 points, 2nd place 46, 3rd place 42, 4th place 40, 5th place 39, 6th place 38, etc…this scoring is similar to T/F and swimming, but would account for the larger number of individuals competing in one XC race.
7. Masks may be required to be worn at the starting line and for an initial duration of a race.
8. All fans, coaches, and officials should wear masks and socially distance themselves. Not an issue for regular season meets, but could prove challenging at post-season events. We could see limits to spectators at post-season races to 2 spectators per qualified athlete, for example.
9. All athletes provide their own water bottle.
10. Hand Sanitizer should be wildly available at finish lines.
11. Masks need to be worn immediately upon finishing a race. (Could masks designed with the meet logo on the front be distributed immediately upon finish as memorabilia for each finishing athlete?)
12. No pre or post race hand shakes.
13. If you are sick or exhibiting any viral symptoms, STAY HOME!
14. If a team travels on buses or vans AND if any one of those athletes or coaches screens positive upon arrival, then no one from said team competes and therefore forfeits.
This is a rapidly evolving situation and nothing is guaranteed. One thing I think we can all agree about is the desire to see XC return this fall in some form, as long as safety measures are in place. Whatever can be done to limit the number of athletes on the starting line, while also allowing for maximum participation, should be explored. Transportation and starting line congestion appear to be the two largest obstacles.
I welcome additional thoughts and questions on how to have a season for our student athletes.
Other random thoughts and notes
⁃ I really feel for the rising seniors. Interstate travel and on-site college visits may prove challenging. This also makes recruitment challenging. For LL League athletes I have course top 10 marks for the past two seasons. That should at least provide a decent comparison for performance relative to those from the class of 2019 and 2020. I am still offering “recruiting profiles” for free to any junior or senior interested.
⁃ I believe the PIAA should consider reclassifying XC into at least 4 classes for 2020 to reduce the number of athletes on the starting line while still allowing for the same number of student athletes to qualify for post-season championships.
⁃ Number of competitors in 2019 at districts by district/gender/classification:
⁃ PIAA District III XC competitors by gender and classification
A Boys – 72
AA Boys – 207
AAA Boys – 300
A Girls – 65
AA Girls – 144
AAA Girls – 237
– PIAA District VI XC competitors by gender and classification
A Boys – 111
AA Boys – 89
AAA Boys – 35
A Girls – 99
AA Girls – 74
AAA Girls – 42
– District 1 had over 350 boys and girls compete in the AAA race in 2019.