Editorial: PIAA and WPIAL set good examples for playing by coronavirus rules

Are you ready for some football?

Well, you have to wait. Thanks, covid-19. And even when it starts, you probably won’t get to see it in person. At least not for high school games. The same goes for other fall sports like soccer and cross country.

This week, the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association unveiled some guidelines for the coming seasons. Social distancing is a given — at least as much as possible when dealing with contact sports. Masks should be kept on when off the field, although they aren’t required during play.

That friendly, sportsmanlike handshake? Not this year. Let’s go with a meaningful glance and a nod, maybe?

Cleaning, distance, not sharing equipment, not switching benches. All of it is an attempt to abide by Gov. Tom Wolf’s guidelines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines and still have a way back to some kind of sports activity in 2020.

“We tried to create a shell, not every little detail down the rabbit hole,” PIAA Executive Director Bob Lombardi said. Instead, the hope was “to give guidelines and guidance of high-consideration items that need to be done on a daily basis.”

On Friday, the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League followed with its own plans. It pushed back the start of seasons for several sports, including those big football games on Friday nights, from August to September.

And when those games do start up, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, there shouldn’t be anyone watching.

The state’s 250-person cap on gatherings means once you put all the students and their coaches and the officials and the other people that have to be on the sidelines or standing nearby, there is precious little room left for football fans or volleyball enthusiasts.

PIAA and WPIAL both generally go less for guidelines and more for regulations. When it comes to advancing the ball or measuring the score, it’s best to deal less in fuzzy what-ifs than well-defined lines.

That is harder to achieve when state requirements can change from day to day and all those individual school districts fielding the teams are trying to figure out exactly how they will move forward in the coronavirus pandemic.

There is still a lot to figure out about what that means for this school year. How will it impact Title IX eligibility if some programs move on and others are restricted? How will sports survive if their booster clubs can’t do fundraisers like concession stands and raffle ticket sales at games?

But it’s a start.

Is it ideal? No. But it’s an attempt to do everything the way both organizations like to do things — according to the rules.