Scott Paine, Lake Chelan School District Athletic Director
The Lake Chelan School District has had quite a few inquires about the news release from the WIAA executive board last week about the start dates for the sport seasons the 2020-2021 school year.
The WIAA has set their dates for the year, however each region has local control to alter the seasons to fit the needs of that specific region.
Therefore for the North Central Region (NCR) high schools, which the Lake Chelan School District, Manson School District and Entiat School District, along with other schools in North Central Washington are a part of, their dates are later than the dates put out by the WIAA.
CHELAN - With the new guidance and requirements provided to school and non-school athletic programs both from the WIAA’s “ Healthy Washington Sport and Activity Guidelines ” and the WA Department of Health’s “ Sporting Activities Covid-19 Requirments ” documents, we now have a path for how we can return to athletic based activities. As it was released yesterday, high schools in the North Central Region are joining together to provide competitive opportunities for high school aged students.
Middle school athletics in the region are offered differently within every school district. For this Covid-19 school year each district is handling their middle school athletic programs differently. Some are looking to do intramurals as they have multiple middle schools in their district while some are looking at not offering those programs this year.
With high school athletic programs being the main focal point for competitive scheduling and just simply having them happen as a priority, it poses some challenges with coordinating middle school athletic seasons. Covid-19 has already put some limitations on availability of district transportation due to hybrid learning models as well as an anticipated shortage of officials that don’t feel comfortable officiating during the pandemic for this year.
Due to the size of our school district it is not feasible to put on intramural programs for our 7th and 8th grade athletic programs. Thus Chelan, Cashmere, and Cascade school districts have agreed to work together as a three team middle school league to provide middle school sport offerings as best as we can for this school year. The proposed seasons are outlined below. It has been decided to omit the sports of basketball and wrestling for this school year only as they currently do not have a phase provided to compete in and with high school seasons being rearranged would have other potential unknown issues in scheduling.
We want to provide our middle school students with some competitive opportunities this year to look forward to. We hope our middle school students will take advantage of all programs that are offered.
Season 1
(Football, Cross Country, Volleyball)
Decision Date: March 29
Season Begins April 12
Season Ends May 7
Season 2
(Track & Field, Softball)
Decision Date: April 26
Season Begins May 10
Season Ends June 4
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