Nebraska says 'all go' on fall sports

Returning state qualifier Kaylie Guerrero will lead Southwest into today’s golf triangular at Cambridge’s Cross Creek Course which starts 2020 varsity sports for area teams. McCook and Cambridge will join the Roughriders with a 2 p.m. opening tee time

R.B. Headley/McCook Gazette

LINCOLN, Neb. — When it comes to COVID-19 and the current status of Nebraska high school fall sports, no news is good news.

At the regularly scheduled Nebraska School Activities Association Board of Directors August meeting Wednesday in Lincoln, everyone from NSAA executive director Jay Bellar and his staff to the eight Board of Directors members gave the thumbs-up for the sports season to continue as planned.

“School administrators I’ve talked to are asking, ‘How are we going to do sports?’’’ said District 3 board member Jon Cerny, superintendent at Bancroft-Rosalie. “I’ve had no one ask if we’ll do sports.”

Practices began Aug. 10 for all fall sports. Softball and girls golf begin competition today with week 0 football games going on Friday — four contests that includes Hastings at Lincoln North Star.

Hastings will host McCook for the Bison varsity season opener a week later on Aug. 28.

Board members across the state gave their assessments of how things look in their respective regions, and in the areas outside of Omaha and Lincoln, most of the COVID-19 risk dials are in moderate-risk yellow and trending toward low-risk green.

New COVID-19 cases have been trending down in Lancaster County in recent weeks, but the risk dial is still in the high-risk orange category.

The NSAA established protocols and guidelines for each fall sport, and the implementation of those has gotten things off to a safe start across the board.

“We’re gaining some momentum,” said NSAA assistant director Nate Neuhaus, who is in charge of football. “Everyone has a great plan about how to move forward and right now they’re making that plan work. If we can get into the season, manage it and adapt where we need to, we’ll be OK.”

The board left the current postseason football playoff structure in place, even though replacement games for regular-season games eliminated because of COVID-19 will not count in the wild-card standings.

The next board meeting is Sept. 17, “and that’s a good target date to see where we’re at,” Neuhaus said. “At that point, we can decide what the back half of the season looks like if we need to.”

Earlier this month, Omaha Public Schools called off fall sports when it moved to full remote learning for the first quarter, which ends Oct. 16.

Northwest Principal Thomas Lee understands the situation OPS athletes have been thrust into, he said during discussion that the broader picture statewide takes precedence.

“I’ve got kids at my school who are in a hard place right now,” Lee said. “They’ve had things that have happened that have changed their lives.

“But this is a local issue,” he added. “We can’t change all these rules for one district.”

McCook fall sports starts today with girls’ golf at Cambridge.