The South Carolina High School League has decided to once again push back the start of its fall sports season.

In a Zoom meeting on Wednesday, the executive committee voted 18-0 to pass a plan that will push back the start of the season for each of the fall sports. The start dates for practices and regular seasons are staggered instead of having every sport start practice on Aug. 17 as originally planned.

“That was the plan from the very beginning, to make it as flexible as possible so that we could continue to move it and react to circumstances or conditions that are being caused by the COVID virus,” SCHSL commissioner Jerome Singleton said when asked if the league is trying to buy itself some time. “So that was from the very onset; the first (proposal) you ever saw from us, it said it was very fluid, and this one is still fluid. We can still make some additional decisions, and it lends itself to that.”

Girls’ golf, girls’ tennis and swimming will begin practice on Aug. 17 and start their regular seasons on Aug. 31. Cross country and volleyball will start practice on Aug. 24 and have their first meets and games on Sept. 7. Competitive cheer will start practice on Sept. 8 and first competitions will begin Oct. 13.

For football, practices will begin Sept. 8, first scrimmages begin Sept. 12, games start Sept. 25, playoffs start Nov. 13 and finals are Dec. 4 and 5. The season will be only seven games with region games first and the playoffs will be only four round instead of five. The latest football season can start is Oct. 2 for the league to get in its championships on Dec. 4 and 5.

Andrews High School head football coach and co-athletic director Scott Durham thinks the SCHSL made a good decision by pushing the season back.

“Probably so,” he said when asked if it was a good call. “With the trends and the numbers and all that, I think it was the right thing to do at this point.”

Georgetown High School athletic director and head football coach Jimmy Noonan agrees that this was a good decision.

“It’s an adjusted plan; it’s not really a new plan,” Noonan said. “It gives us a few weeks of wiggle room; we still have the seven games and the playoffs. If folks are looking at it from that perspective, we haven’t lost anything. It buys us a little more time with Phase 1 and Phase 1.5. I haven’t been able to work with the kids since March. I’m excited to see the players again.”

Georgetown County is still in Phase 1, which means they can only have groups of nine players and a coach working out at once. The fact that the season is being pushed back is also beneficial to Noonan because this is his first year at Georgetown High School.

“For a situation like ours at Georgetown, new coach, new system, a new way of doing things, pushing the season back gives us a little more time,” Noonan said. “We’ve all had to deal with the pushing of COVID, but it gives a program like us where everything is new (a chance) to maybe catch up a little bit. So I’ve got a different perspective than most everybody else.”

The appellate committee was originally supposed to vote on whether or not to flip the fall and spring seasons on Aug. 10, but Lexington School District One dropped its appeal. This would have moved high-risk sports like football to the spring, and low-risk sports like baseball to the fall.

Although Durham approved of what the SCHSL ended up deciding, he thinks flipping the seasons would’ve been an even better plan.

“To me I thought that was the best plan,” he said. “No. 1, baseball and softball are playing now with all the travel ball going on. The other thing is transportation – you can fit baseball and softball on one bus. With football, you’re doubling your transportation. I think it was a good plan, but I was in the minority, probably. But the majority rules and we’ll move on with what we’ve got.”

Noonan thinks that the SCHSL was right in not flipping the seasons.

“It’s a guessing game,” he said. “A few states have gone that route. Michigan is playing football in January, but that’s not me. It’s easy to do with a closed mindset, but there are an awful lot of moving parts to move the seasons around; something’s got to give. We rely on kids who play multiple sports, but if you cram them into the same season and sports overlap, some kids will have to choose between lacrosse and football.”

Noonan also thinks it would be harder for smaller schools, such as 3A Georgetown, to rearrange its seasons.

“Larger schools might be able to do that, but for smaller schools, it might not be possible to carry all the sports,” he said. “What fairness would it be to put them (low-risk sports) into higher numbers of COVID (when their spring season was canceled)? Don’t get me wrong, I want to play our season, but we’re taking it all in and putting it into perspective. It’s very easy to pick apart the decisions being made to COVID, but no one has the answers; it’s all a guessing game.”

Georgetown and Horry county school districts both started workouts again on Wednesday. Horry County planned to start on Monday but Hurricane Isaias postponed its workouts. The SCHSL is currently allowing its member schools to engage in Phase 1.5 for summer workouts, which means up to 15 players and a coach can practice in a group and players are allowed to share athletic equipment, such as balls and football sleds.

The league also unanimously passed a rule that schools won’t be penalized if it has to cancel games due to COVID-19 outbreaks.