Princeton High School will not return to any in-person instruction until Oct. 19 due to COVID-19 concerns, but the Tigers’ fall varsity sports programs will follow the NJSIAA guidelines for a mid-September practice start, the district’s school board decided Tuesday night.

By a 7-3 vote, the board agreed to proceed with the NJSIAA’s Sept. 14 practice start date for outdoor fall sports, including cross-country, field hockey, football, soccer and girls tennis. The NJSIAA had already moved indoor fall sports, which for Princeton includes girls volleyball, to a March-April season.

The decision comes about a month after Princeton’s neighbor across Route 1, West Windsor-Plainsboro, decided not to move ahead with fall sports.

Such a move was a potential option for Princeton as well, said Jim Smirk, the Tigers’ boys and girls cross-country coach.

“It’s my understanding that the range of options ranged from no fall sports, which some schools in the county have taken on as their approach, all the way up to what happened (tonight), which is return to open,” Smirk said.

The NJSIAA has set a Sept. 28 start for girls tennis competition, Oct. 1 for cross-country, field hockey and soccer and Oct. 2 for football. Postseason dates are in similar or slightly earlier windows to usual years, with tennis wrapping up by October’s end and the rest concluding by Nov. 22.

Along with giving Princeton’s athletes the camaraderie that comes with being part of a team, the decision was of great consequence for Princeton programs that have put up successful results in recent seasons and can aim for more this fall.

MileSplit ranks Smirk’s girls program No. 12 in the state on its preseason list, the best in the capital region and one of two area schools in the site’s top 20. Princeton’s neighbor to the north, No. 20 Montgomery, is the other area team in that ranking.

The Tigers’ girls tennis team made the sectional semifinals in Central Jersey, Group 4 last fall, as did the field hockey team.

Regardless of the board’s decision, the fall 2020 season was going to be different. While the board gave varsity sports the go-ahead for the Sept. 14 practice start, the sub-varsity teams will have to hold off a bit longer. The board’s decision allowed for freshman and junior-varsity teams to be “phased in, following NJSIAA protocols.”

“Regardless of what decision was made, there were going to be adjustments that had to be made in response to keeping everybody healthy and safe,” Smirk said. “With a program like cross-country that works with everybody all at once, with our new runners all the way through our veterans, it does represent some significant challenges, but I think those are things that we can manage.

“The veterans, at least speaking for cross-country, have been doing summer training and have been preparing for a return, and we knew that our sub-varsity runners were going to need to spend, when they return, some time doing some base work. I think we had some plans in place for that. The reality is, we’ve been planning for contingencies since last May and we’ve probably gone through 50 or 60 different iterations of what potentially could happen.”

As for when the sub-varsity runners might be able to join their varsity teammates, that is still to be determined.

“I don’t necessarily know that we have those benchmarks in place yet,” Smirk said. “Certainly, we will have some more information moving forward over the next week when we have meetings with our athletic director and working with the assistant superintendent in defining some of those things. Even with those plans in place, obviously, we’re going to be monitoring the health and safety of our athletes and making decisions in short order to allow for those.”

Princeton athletic director Brian Dzbenski could not be reached for comment following the board’s decision.

His teams’ seasons given the go-ahead, albeit with a later start, Smirk understood those who had reservations about allowing fall sports to go forward.

“I think the reality here is that there’s a lot of unknowns,” Smirk said. “Certainly, the board members’ concerns were valid. They discussed what their concerns were and that’s what they’re there for. That’s part of their role, (to) have a positive discourse about it. Across the board, I think everybody I’ve worked with has been really responsible in having an open conversation about what the possibilities of athletics and what the challenges are.”

Smirk’s fall coaching colleagues will have their own mitigation measures as varied as their sports. While cross-country may not have the contact of football or soccer, pushing one’s body to cover 5,000 meters as fast as possible, sometimes shoulder to shoulder with a pack of teammates or with competitors, doesn’t lend itself to social distancing. In keeping students safe, Smirk and his fellow coaches can look to the outcomes and measures from other states that have already begun high school competition, and to higher levels of their sports that have re-awakened as well.

“Certainly, we’re going to take a look at the data that’s coming out from other levels of running,” Smirk said. “They’re starting to have some smaller competitions open in track and field. The pro-level athletes went through a partial opening back in late July that the U.S. Olympic Committee and their health group Is looking at. I don’t think the challenge has changed just because it is sports.

“If you look at what the CDC is looking at for recommendations, you want to minimize maximum contact time. You want to keep your groups small. You want to, if you have a choice between enclosed indoor space and open outdoor space, you choose open outdoor space. You wear masks. You stay apart. Following those guidelines, we’re looking to mitigate and minimize risk.”

With the later starts, each fall team will have to recalibrate from the familiar signals the calendar gives. When October begins, cross-country teams across the state are usually getting set for the major meet of the mid-season, the Shore Coaches Invitational at Holmdel Park, annual site of the state finals in mid-November. The Shore Coaches meet has already been canceled, back in July.

“We’re certainly not ready to start on day one with competition one way or another,” Smirk said. “We’re going to go through the opening phases that the NJSIAA has provided for each phase and we’re going to follow those rules and we’re going to monitor. We have the personnel in place and the protocols that we’re going to start with and refine over time.”

Inside or outside of sports, refining of protocols is happening everywhere in a time like few currently alive have experienced.