Cincinnati Public School parents, coaches and athletes enjoyed a collective (and virtual) sigh of relief Monday night when the district announced that member schools could resume athletics.

Non-contact sports are able to start full competition this week and contact sports can return to intra-district competition. Contact sports can return to full competition next week, according to a CPS press release.

CPS athletics had previously been paused since Aug. 3, but teams have been able to practice since June. 

One big question was whether spectators would be permitted at CPS prep sporting events. The board said a decision on that will be forthcoming. CPS will also continue distance learning, but there will be a meeting Sept. 21 to decide whether the district will implement a phased-in approach that would start Sept. 28. 

CPS football teams have missed half of the Ohio high school regular-season and will only play intra-district games this week. Woodward and Shroder are scheduled to play Thursday at Stargel Stadium (6 p.m.) in the first CPS football game of 2020. 

Ohio high school football teams have until Thursday to opt-in for the Ohio High School Athletic Association state playoffs as new regions for the postseason will be drawn on Friday. 

More: Ohio high school football playoff checklist: Everybody’s in, what next?

Jerome Belcher, a Shroder High School graduate, has a son who plays football for the Jaguars. Belcher has been an advocate for getting Cincinnati Public School athletes back on the field this fall as every other Cincinnati school district has been playing for multiple weeks. 

Belcher watched every second of the more than four-hour CPS board meeting Monday. He feels strongly that CPS’ decision to allow athletics to resume this week was made to avoid further backlash. 

“I think it was a failed attempt to save face,” Belcher said. “Technically, I don’t think they’re really back.”

Belcher is concerned CPS will not opt-in to the OHSAA state playoffs by Thursday’s deadline, which is why the decision was made to not permit member schools to play against other districts until next week. He said it comes down to control. 

“By restricting the competition, they’re able to control what they feel are more safe scenarios inside of the district,” Belcher said of his concern. “By prolonging the (football) season to full competition another week, it jeopardizes tournament play. 

There was growing frustration among CPS parents like Belcher, so much so, the Facebook group “Let Us Play” was started and has grown to nearly 250 members. Parents said their irritation came from a checklist CPS constructed that laid out where they would like to see coronavirus numbers reach before high school sports could return. 

Parents believed those checkpoints were reached, but the board moved the goalline saying they wanted to look at coronavirus numbers for Labor Day, too. 

Belcher, who spoke during the meeting during the public session, took issue when the board referenced COVID-19 spikes at college campuses. 

 “In the first meeting, they said, ‘we’re gonna look at the number and if they’re this, this and this, we’ll move forward. The numbers met those goals and now they’re adding four more numbers, Labor Day statistics and they want to compare high school students to college students that go to bars and live in dormitories,” he said. “I think the numbers dictated that they had no wiggle room, so they started talking about Labor Day numbers and college campuses. It was a travesty.”

Belcher said he requested information on how the district monitored daily COVID-19 numbers in regards to sports returning on multiple occasions, but those requests went unanswered. 

“I think that they’ve relied on the fact that the public doesn’t have access to all of the information,” Belcher said. “They do not want the public to know and they have not been transparent. They want us to know what they want us to know. They’re controlling the narrative.”

The lack of transparency from CPS, Belcher said, was one of the reasons for rallies from parents, players and supporters and a Change.Org petition that has been signed nearly 2,000 times. 

More: Cincinnati Public Schools parents, athletes at protest rally: ‘We really need a season’

Belcher said the rallies didn’t have as big of an impact as he and other supporters would’ve liked, but they played a role in showing how CPS was the only district still without a concrete decision on whether it was playing fall sports or not. Teams have been practicing since June and have had less than 20 positive COVID-19 cases across all sports and all schools, Belcher said. 

“Once the numbers dropped and we have then seen what they were doing and you combine that with all of the interviews from all the parents and students across the district, now there was a very combustible element and it blew up in their faces (Monday night),” he said. “

It was difficult for Belcher and other parents to see the news Monday night and not immediately be ecstatic because of the perceived caveat that postseason play will be axed for strictly intra-squad contests. 

“Anyone who has their eyes open can clearly see these were just carrots at the end of the stick they want to dangle and keep people distracted from the ultimate goal,” he said. “I really felt that if they could justify it, they would’ve shut down the entire sports program until the end of the year.”

Clarity will come on Thursday’s deadline, though, when CPS will decide whether to allow their football squads to compete in the postseason, which is set to begin Oct. 9. 

Cincinnati school board members could not be immediately reached through email. The Enquirer will update this story.