Washington updates rules for return of high school sports. When will there be games?
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association updated its return-to-play guidelines after Gov. Inslee’s office issued new guidance for returning to education-based sports and activities on Tuesday. Inslee said during a press conference Tuesday that more activity would be allowed under different phases of the state’s Safe Start plan.
The new guidance from the Governor’s office will tie high school sports to COVID-19 benchmarks in individual counties — specifically, cases per 100,000 residents in each county, as well as the percentage of positive tests. The previous return-to-play guidelines were tied to phasing in the Governor’s Safe Start Plan.
The Governor’s office has informed the WIAA that these guidelines must be followed and neither schools nor community sports programs have the authority to implement more lenient policies, per the WIAA’s release.
For “high-risk” sports such as football and basketball to be allowed to have games, counties will need to have a 14-day case rate under 25 per 100,000 and less than five percent positivity rate. As of Tuesday, Pierce County has a 14-day case rate of 78.9 per 100,000, which puts the county in a high-risk state for allowing participation.
If the county reaches a moderate state (cases between 25 and 75 per 100k), games for low and moderate-risk sports, such as baseball, tennis, cross country, golf, soccer and volleyball would be allowed to return, without tournaments and with limited spectators in attendance.
Without at least some form of in-person learning with high schools — whether it’s full-time, in-person instruction or at least a hybrid learning model — an imminent return to high school athletics is unlikely. Pierce County schools have stumbled with plans to return to in-person learning, as rising COVID-19 cases have caused local districts to stay in remote learning for the time being.
The updated guidance is good news for most sports, which will be allowed to return to action in some form, provided schools begin to return to in-person instruction in some capacity. But it’s still worrying news in the state’s most populous counties for the state’s biggest sports, football and basketball, which don’t appear close to a return with coronavirus cases continuing to trend in the wrong direction.
The full release and updated return-to-play guidelines can be found on the WIAA’s website.
This story was originally published October 6, 2020 at 5:57 PM.
