The University Interscholastic League reiterated its stance that it hopes to be able to resume all activities before the end of the scheduled school year.
Nearly two-andhalf weeks since the UIL suspended those activities—games, competitions, practices, workouts and rehearsals—until at least May 4 came a meeting of the organization’s Medical Advisory Committee via videoconference on Sunday.
During the nearly hour-and-a-half meeting that also touched on concussion protocols and physicals for the 2020–21 academic year, the UIL stressed it will try to finish all of the sports that were halted in mid-March because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Until we have more information about when schools may or may not be in session, it’s difficult for us to make any sort of final plans,” UIL deputy director Dr. Jamey Harrison said. “We do have plans that would allow us to complete all of our state championship activities for this academic year, should that opportunity present itself. We will communicate very quickly with schools what those plans include, what all the various deadlines and otherwise associated with that deadline will be.”
While school districts had already been closed for two weeks, last Monday Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he would keep them closed through May 4—a date the UIL had already imposed as its earliest deadline to return. And while districts are shut down, remote learning has become the norm in order to allow the academic year to be completed.
“This school closure is different than any other school closure we’ve experienced in the past in that they are really not closed,” Harrison said. “They are physically closed but they are continuing to deliver instructions; kids are still going to school, they’re just not at school. They are doing it at home through a variety of remote instruction models.
“I think schools are fulfilling their obligations remotely. The biggest question is whether or not schools will go back during the regular scheduled academic year. I think there’s growing skepticism that will happen.”
There have been nearly a dozen states which have already cancelled their spring sport seasons—Alabama, Alaska, California, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
But the UIL is trying to keep its options open. So is the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, which also put a May 4 deadline for a potential return to competition.
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