High school football in February? Soccer players wearing masks? Volleyball matches outdoors?

Welcome to the plight of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.

The MIAA’s Board of Directors is scheduled to meet Wednesday morning, where it will hear from its COVID-19 Task Force on a number of recommendations for the upcoming school year. The Task Force met with Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley to discuss its proposal on Monday, and now the process moves forward with the fall season fast approaching.

The good news is that it appears fall sports will happen in some capacity, it just won’t look much like what we’ve seen in the past. And if some schools find moderate risk sports like soccer and field hockey impossible under the latest EEA guidelines, there may only be a small catalog of offerings come September.

Let’s start with football, which isn’t going to be played in Massachusetts this fall. That’s an unfortunate reality, but the MIAA is trying to keep the hope of games alive, albeit via unconventional means. According to the Boston Herald, the proposal going before the Board of Directors for the 2020-21 school year would be broken up into four seasons, instead of the usual three. Football, along with other higher risk sports, would slot in between winter and spring seasons, tentatively set for Feb. 22 through April 25.

The MIAA hopes that by offering a “fourth” season, or “gap” season, it will provide flexibility for school districts. This would also be the window for other sports like soccer and field hockey to be played, if some schools deem that the modifications necessary to move forward are too extreme for this fall. Those modifications include wearing masks on the field, and other measures to ensure additional spacing and non-contact.

Football in February? Sounds like it could be challenging, but again, haven’t we seen snow football in Franklin County before? Seems like every other Thanksgiving or so. There’s no guarantee that this fourth season will happen, but higher risk sports will be reevaluated when the current EEA guidelines expire in November. Stay tuned on that front.

The “traditional” fall season is expected to run Sept. 14 through Nov. 20. Here’s what we do know: golf and cross country will likely look and feel very similar to past years. Cross country would need to stagger starting times in order to avoid packs of runners beginning together, but that should be easy enough to navigate. As for golf? Well, expect numbers to be up on golf rosters this fall.

Volleyball is a bit of an unknown, though some states have gotten creative there. Vermont is playing girls’ volleyball outdoors this fall, which is something the MIAA may choose to explore. Soccer and field hockey are popular fall sports in these parts, and while both may still happen, they would likely undergo significant changes to meet state guidelines, as discussed earlier. How the MIAA will handle those sports is what I’m most eager to hear from the Board of Directors meeting on Wednesday.

Winter season is tentatively scheduled for Nov. 30 through Feb. 21, with sports like basketball, ice hockey, wrestling, skiing, indoor track and swimming on the docket. Again, the status of those sports will be re-examined come November, but there’s time to figure out solutions to those problems.

The gap season for football would follow, and spring sports would close it all out from April 26 through July 3. Yes, you’re reading that correctly – July. While spring would be extended into the summer months, I’m sure many current spring sport athletes who didn’t get to participate in 2020 would be happy to oblige if that’s what it takes to get some games in.

It’s a lot to take in, and there are no easy answers or solutions. With no federal high school sporting guidelines, each state throughout the country has taken a slightly different approach to the upcoming fall season. How will Massachusetts stack up? We won’t know that for awhile, but at least we’re moving toward the direction of games being played in some sports. By the end of the week, we should have a road map on how to navigate the months ahead.