Five more Treasure Valley high schools will see their athletic teams return to competition this week.

The West Ada School District school board voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a plan to allow its high school sports teams to begin competition, despite the school district not yet opening its buildings to students. The approval comes with the district still in the red classification by Idaho’s Central Health District.

The plan limits attendance to participants, coaches and essential personnel while the school district remains in red, which indicates a high risk of community transmission of the COVID-19 virus.

“Just to have that opportunity, I’m happy for all the people in the program,” said West Ada District Activities Director Jason Warr. “This is about as normal as we can make it in this unnormal time. So I’m happy for the kids for that reason.”

With the approvals, the school district’s athletic programs can begin immediately, starting with a pair of girls soccer games today. Rocky Mountain hosts Kuna, while Mountain View will play at Meridian. Other sports are also scheduled to begin this week, including three football games, two of which will pit district teams against one another,

Mountain View is scheduled to take on Rocky Mountain in an early season matchup involving state powerhouses, while Centennial hosts Meridian and Eagle will host Kuna. Other 5A Southern Idaho Conference schools in the Boise School District, as well as Skyview, will not return to play this week.

“We kind of held on and didn’t cancel stuff,” Warr said. “We told our people ‘you got to cancel through Tuesday’ and most of our stuff if we need to, we can reschedule some of that. For right now we can work with Kuna and our hope is Boise can come around. But for right now, we’ll just make it work with us.”

The reopening plan is one that the school district has been working on all summer, with the target of returning to competition this week. West Ada schools have already missed the first two weeks of the Idaho High School Activities Association’s season. Warr said there was hope that CDH would move the district into yellow, which would have allowed parents in attendance for games. But on Monday CDH kept the district in red.

That didn’t throw things off plan, too much, as Warr said they had plans for what to do in red, yellow, as well as in green, which would allow no more than 28 percent of maximum capacity inside the stadiums and gyms. The capacity would include participants.

“I’d be lying to you if I didn’t tell you it would be a lot easier if we were in yellow,” Warr said. “But we can only control the factors we can control. We’re doing what’s best for our district and our kids within the parameters that have been given to us.”