Coronavirus In Minnesota: High School Athletes Keep Training In Hopes Of Condensed Spring Season
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MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Minnesota schools and athletes are holding out hope there could still be a partial spring season.
The Minnesota State High School League had a Zoom meeting Thursday with more than 200 high school athletic directors. They talked about the options and realities of squeezing a season into a shorter span of time, about how this would play out.
It's tough for Edina senior Sean Baird to keep training for their non-existent track and field season, but he knows they have to be prepared in case it starts back up.
"Yeah, I'm pretty bummed out, and this training is pretty demoralizing," Baird said. "We're just trying to keep the fitness up at this point,"
Josh Thurow, athletic director for Minnehaha Academy, says he's been working with the other ADs in his conference to put together a condensed spring sports season for high school athletes.
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"We've gone ahead and scheduled conference seasons for all of our sports," Thurow said.
Minnehaha's baseball and softball teams would normally play about 20 games in a season. If school returns on May 5, Thurow says he's hoping to get at least 10 to 12 games in.
"Typically a coach will say, 'Hey, we don't want to play three or four games in one week.' Well, that goes out the window now. We're going to play, you know, every chance we get," Thurow said.
Erich Martens with the MSHSL says it's still too early to make any official decisions on section and state tournaments, but the league is not ruling these tournaments out yet.
"Going beyond the end of June or that Fourth-of-July time frame isn't wise, and it wouldn't really be supported, and so we see the end time being the end of June if we can put something together," Martens said.
These athletes would rather have a season than not, but they're remaining realistic.
"I understand that this COVID thing isn't really going away," Baird said.
Twenty-three states have already cancelled school, along with spring activities, for the rest of the year, including Wisconsin. Gov. Tony Evers made the decision Thursday.
