The fall sports season has been put through a series of ups and downs even before it was scheduled to get underway. The latest up came last Friday when the PIAA voted to go ahead with the fall sports season and allow teams to start official practices as early as this past Monday. For its part, the East Penn Conference had decided to delay the start of contact sports until late September and the league has decided to stick to that plan.

“It was a difficult decision for them to have to make,” said Emmaus Athletic Director Becky George. “When the governor recommended not having sports, there was a lot of reevaluating that had to be done. Sports have been going on, just not with competition.”

The EPC schedule begins August 31 for girls tennis and September 15 for cross-country. Field hockey, soccer and girls volleyball begin on September 25 and football is set to get underway on October 2. While the schedules are set, they’re not chiseled in stone.

Individual districts can opt out of playing sports if they deem it necessary and as we’ve seen with the coronavirus, things can change for the better or for the worse very quickly.

“I think there are still some concerns about competition and what could happen,” said George. “If some schools do opt out, it could greatly affect the schedules for other teams. Right now though, I think there’s reason to be hopeful.”

George pointed out that the EPC schedule has its 18 teams playing games only against teams in their own county to limit travel. The plan worked well since there are six teams in each of three different counties, making schedules relatively easy to set. However, if a couple teams – especially teams in one county – were to opt out, it would throw things off.

Like any group of people involved in high school sports, the Emmaus coaches do have different opinions, but George is proud of the respect that they’ve shown for the positions of other coaches.

“All I’ve asked of the coaches is that they think things through, respect the decisions of other coaches and that we stand as a united front,” said George. “They have done all of that and we’ve been able to discuss the pros and cons of schedules and everything else related to the fall season.”

Even if the season does start, one concern is that a team could have a player test positive for the coronavirus, which could cause the entire team to be quarantined for two weeks. One scenario is that a team might have a bus trip to a game and a day or two later, one of the players test positive. At that point, all the players would likely have to be quarantined and their opponent may have to be quarantined as well. With the abbreviated schedule, that two-week interruption would effectively end that team’s season.

There is hope that a rapid testing regimen may be available before too long, which would allow players, coaches and staff to be tested on some type of regular basis, limiting the chances of a player who is positive being around the team.

For now, the task for coaches is to get their teams ready for the start of the season and prepare just as they would for any other season. All the while though, the coaches and players know in the back of their minds that in the coronavirus era, change is a constant.