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A Michigan High School Athletic Association official is optimistic that football and other sports will be able to play this fall.

The MHSAA plans to release a detailed guideline Thursday morning that officials say should help many schools, parents and coaches get a better understanding of the road Michigan High School athletics will have to take in order to get back to a normal routine.

“We’ve said from the very beginning that we are going to try and keep the fall sports season intact as much as we can, but there’s no telling what might happen between now and next month,” said MHSAA media and content coordinator Geoff Kimmerly. “We will have some contingencies in place in case we need to be creative, but as of right now, nothing has changed as far as the plan for the fall sports season.”

The guidelines will come one day after the state announced 891 new coronavirus cases in Michigan — the state’s highest number in two months.

“We are checking the numbers every day at around 3 p.m. like everybody else that has an interest in sports,” said Kimmerly. “We look at case numbers, hospitalizations, death rates, positive-test rates, and all those things. All those numbers matter most to help the state health department because that’s how they put together what phase we are in and that’s ultimately going to determine when we get students back in school and when student-athletes can get back to playing sports.

“For example, most of the state is currently in phase four, and you can’t really hold any large events indoors in that stage. “That would put volleyball and girls swimming and diving in jeopardy. In order for those sports to happen, we would really need to get to phase five, because the indoor capacity is stricter than the outdoor events.”

A final decision on fall sports is not expected until the end of the month when the vision of the future is a little clearer and more information can be processed.

“We’re planning on releasing a statement tomorrow morning that will shed some more light on where we are headed moving forward, what some of the contingencies might look like and what our guidelines will be for the next few weeks,” said Kimmerly. “We’re hoping to have some more concrete decisions made up in the next two weeks. We know we don’t have a ton of time before fall sports practices are supposed to begin, so we want to have our plans and contingencies ironed out by the end of the month or by the first few days of August at the latest.

“For now, we’ll continue our discussions with the representative board, but I can tell you that we want to have three sports seasons this academic school year and we are going to do everything we can to make that happen.”

Michigan joins Ohio and Indiana among the state’s currently planning for fall sports.

“We’re keeping track of what Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin are doing because we have a number of schools that play other schools from those states during the course of their seasons,” said Kimmerly. “We also have our executive directors as members of a Midwest group that stays in constant contact with each other on almost a daily basis.

“In a lot of the decisions we’ve made and continue to make, we confer with what our neighbor states are doing and bounce ideas off of them. It’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all type of solution, but we are trying to stay on the same page with what many states in our region are doing.”

The Ohio High School Athletic Association announced Tuesday morning that it plans to host its usual lineup of fall sports during the 2020-21 academic school year while following coronavirus guidelines. The OHSAA noted that the governor’s office had approved practices and competitions between schools for boys and girls golf, girls tennis and volleyball, but had not yet approved football, cross country, field hockey and soccer for competitions in Ohio. However, all fall sports are being allowed to begin practices at their scheduled date of Aug. 1.

The Indiana High School Athletic Association is planning to take a similar course of action as they prepare to return to fall sports in a month.

“We’re still scheduled to start the fall sports season with fans in attendance starting on Aug. 15,” said IHSAA co-commissioner Paul Neidig. “That’s obviously still a month away, but that’s where we are at as of today. We all know that things are rapidly changing with the conversation around the start of school, but as of today, we’re still scheduled to start at its normal time.”

Neidig, who will officially take over for retiring commissioner Bobby Cox on Aug. 1, believes the top priorities moving forward should be the safety and health of athletes, coaches and spectators and being as transparent as possible as information becomes available during uncertain times.

“The biggest challenge has been providing accurate, timely information with everything going on,” he said. “I think you have to resist the thought process of looking too far out because this is not a situation where you can look out six weeks and decide what the future holds. It’s just not going to work that way. We have to keep people grounded, keep people focused on short-term goals and make sure that we are following experts on social distancing, wearing masks and doing everything we can to make sure we get back to sports as soon as we can.”

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