Syracuse, N.Y. — The Salt City Athletic Conference and Onondaga High School League — among others — have elected to move girls swimming and diving to the spring sports II season, according to statements released from both conferences.

Last week, the New York State Public High School Athletic Association updated its return to play guidelines, which offered leagues and schools the opportunity to move sports to different seasons or times of the year.

“Currently, there are six schools that have either limited or no access to a swim facility for practices and meets,” said SCAC president Scott Sugar. “The remaining schools have all admitted they will face challenges with capacity issues which would limit if not close facilities to spectators during competitions.”

The SCAC includes Auburn, Baldwinsvlle, Cicero-North Syracuse, Fayetteville-Manlius, Jamesville-Dewitt, Liverpool, Oswego, Syracuse and West Genesee.

Teams like F-M and C-NS, which swim at off school locations such as LeMoyne College and Cazenovia College, are not allowed to due to the sites being closed to outside groups.

The newly created Fall Sports Season II begins March 1 and will include high-risk sports such as football, volleyball and cheerleading.

“Since we are not competing for a Sectional or State championship and given the facility challenges many schools face the March 1 start date will hopefully alleviate many of these hurdles. Liverpool’s pool will be opened and it is our hopes that league schools will be given more freedom to allow fellow league school to use their facility if needed,” the letter said.

Earlier this week, Section III’s Frontier League announced 12 of its member schools opted not to participate in a fall sports season because of the coronavirus.

The OHSL’s decision is a domino effect of the SCAC and Frontier League’s announcement to postpone girls swimming and diving.

“This was not an easy decision as the member schools of the OHSL desired to compete this fall,” the OHSL statement said. “However, with the limited number of member schools that host girls swimming and diving it has become impractical to continue with the Fall I season given the lack of competition available. Although we are desperate to offer our student-athletes an athletic experience this fall, we believe that the experience would not be as meaningful without competition.”

While girls swimming will have to wait until March, other lower-risk sports such as field hockey, golf, gymnastics, soccer and tennis are allowed to begin practicing on Monday.

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Contact Mike Curtis anytime at mcurtis@syracuse.com or find him on Twitter at @MikeACurtis2.