By Mike Hutchens, UC Schools Communications Director
Union City, Tenn.–It’s all systems go for cross country, golf and volleyball at Union City High School.
Tornado football, though, is still up in the air.
TSSAA Executive Director Bernard Childress said Wednesday that the beginning of the 2020 fall sports season for cross country, golf and volleyball would go off as originally planned.
Deemed non close-contact sports, Childress’ ruling means those respective seasons will begin in August as is typically the case. Teams may resume practices stated in the original TSSAA sports calendar once the current dead period ends on Monday.
The start of the coming prep football season has been delayed, however, by Gov. Bill Lee’s latest Executive Order and has altered the landscape of what will come once that order expires Aug. 29. Until then, only weight training and conditioning will be allowed, with no contact permitted – even during individualized instruction.
Those guidelines will also be in place for all other high school sports until the Executive Order ends.
Childress presented Board of Control members four options for the 2020 football campaign and gave the group a week to seek input from the schools they represent as to which of the plans will be implemented after a board vote July 8.
An exception to that would be if the Governor’s Sports Medicine Advisory Committee listens to a request from the TSSAA to be included with college and professional sports to not be governed in the Executive Order guidelines.
In that event, high schools would resume their regular routines after the dead period ends.
In each of the plans, padded practices would be allowed beginning Aug. 30 – the day after the Executive Order expires — with three weeks of full-gear practice to follow before the season opens on Sept. 18. All current schedules will be scrapped in the first two plans, with the TSSAA re-setting each school’s regular season region slate.
The remainder of the schedules will be filled by non-league games for each program.
There will be no scrimmages nor jamborees allowed before the regular season begins in each of the four plans.
Those options include:
- A seven-game regular season with a full complement of the current five-round playoff system to follow. The postseason would begin as originally scheduled in early November with four teams in each region qualifying in a 32-team bracket in each classification, as is currently the case. Teams that do not make the playoffs will be allowed to schedule two more games to give themselves a nine-game schedule.
- An eight-game regular season with only the top two finishers in each region qualifying for the playoffs in a 16-team, four-round set-up. The postseason would begin a week later than originally scheduled, with one round essentially eliminated, but the state title games would still be held as originally slated in Cookeville in early December. Non-playoff teams would be allowed to play two additional games to fill out a complete 10-game schedule.
- A nine-game regular season with an eight-team playoff set-up where only the region champions would qualify. There would be three rounds of playoffs, beginning with the quarterfinals which would be held on Nov. 20. Teams would use their original schedule, beginning the year with their Sept. 18 games, then pick up Weeks 3 and 4 for their seventh and eighth games before then playing either their Week 1 or Week 2 opponent for the ninth game. Once more, a game could be added to the non-playoff qualifiers, giving programs a full season schedule.
- A final and most unlikely option presented would be a complete 10-week schedule and no playoffs or championship games. Schools would begin the year with the Week 5 games on their original schedules.
UCHS Athletic Director Shane Sisco said head football coach favors Plan #1 and he would vote for that in communications with Board representative Greg Scott of Milan.
“We both feel like it’s the best option for us and our program, Sisco said. “We’ll have five region games and just have to find two more. It’ll be a challenge to find teams with coinciding dates and the opponents we will find might not necessarily be the ones already on our schedule.
“More than anything, though, we just hope to move forward toward having some type of football season.”