No High Risk Inter-School Sports Competition
by Doug La Rocque
Even though Rensselaer County has approved high risk sports competition between school districts, last week the Hoosick Falls district issued a statement that it has opted out at this time, at least for winter sports such as basketball, cheerleading and wrestling. On Wednesday, the Berlin School District issued a statement, that while it would allow in house practices and intramural competition, there would be no games or meets with other schools. The statement from the BCS Board of Education is as follows:
The NYS Department of Health, as well as Rensselaer County Executive Steven McLaughlin and Public Health Director Mary Fran Wachunas, have announced that high-risk winter sports may begin this month.
The Berlin CSD athletic program will move forward with in-house practices and intramurals for basketball, wrestling and cheerleading, after there was unanimous consensus from the Berlin CSD Board of Education. It is important to underscore that, at this time, high-risk sports will only involve Berlin students and will remain within school buildings. Berlin CSD is working with Questar III to implement a mandatory weekly testing plan for student athletes and will follow all state mandates with regard to social distancing, mask-wearing, temperature checks and sanitization.
New Lebanon Follows Suit
The Eastwick Press recently spokes to NLCS Athletic Director Stephanie Luce, who told us they plan to also hold in house only practices. She referred to it as an open gym policy, limited to NLCS students only. They too will be implanting weekly COVID-19 testing programs.
New Lebanon and Berlin have combined many of their sports teams, but under guidelines issued by the NYS Health Department, participation in high risk sports was left up to an individual county’s health Department. While Rensselaer County (where Berlin is located) has said yes, Columbia County (where New Lebanon is located) Health Department Director Jack Mabb has said no, because the COVID-19 infection rate there remains above the state’s 4% guideline.
The decision does not affect the New Lebanon/Berlin swim team, as swimming (taking place in each competitor’s home pool) is not considered high risk.
The decisions by Berlin and New Lebanon concerns the winter sports of Basketball, Wrestling and Cheerleading. No decision has been made yet on spring sports, other than New York State has canceled all statewide spring championships.