The Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Association left this fall’s high school sports decisions largely up to its member schools. If you want to play this fall, go ahead. If not, you can move sports to the spring.

Thus far, the majority of Western Wisconsin schools are giving it a go this fall.

All Middle Border Conference schools will play fall sports, including football and volleyball, which were moved to condensed spring seasons in Minnesota — and River Falls, Hudson, Menomonie and Rice Lake school districts voted to do the same Monday.

New Richmond activities director Scott Farmer said the Middle Border Conference’s decision came after getting a feel for how contact days in sports such as volleyball and football went this summer. In those sessions, he said, kids were committed to following health protocols.

“You just could see that they really wanted to be active and really wanted to be doing stuff,” Farmer said. “We’ve been just adamant about making sure we’re doing what we can to keep them safe, and decided that, as a conference we’re just going to move forward and see where this takes us.”

River Falls activities director Roland Hall noted there is no way of knowing if conditions will be better in the spring, adding that field availability in March is weather-dependent and unreliable. There also were concerns about sports seasons overlapping with one another.

“We’ve got to get back to some routines,” Hall said. “They’ve been working hard, and it’s just going to be good to see them on the field. The hard part is to make sure that they stay on the field.”

Hall noted prep sports can’t flip to a bubble model like many pro sports have done. He said it will take a community-wide effort to follow protocols and keep everyone as safe as possible.

A number of fall sports are already underway. Farmer said New Richmond successfully pulled off two tennis events and two golf events last week.

“The kids have been just awesome, the coaches are on top of things. The kids are wearing masks when they can’t stay socially distanced. … It’s been awesome to watch,” said Farmer, in his first year as the Tigers’ AD. “I hope it can continue. It’d be great to see all this hard work by everybody pay off.”

Soccer, volleyball and football practices can’t begin until Labor Day. Football games won’t be played until Sept. 25.

The WIAA gave schools the option to move some fall sports to spring starting in February. If a school attempts to play this fall and completes less than half of its season before having to shut down for COVID-related concerns, that school can then still participate in the alternative spring season.

The Eau Claire Area School District chose to move all of its traditional fall sports to the spring. Hall said that “put a big dent in” the scheduling for Big Rivers Conference schools that planned to play conference opponents twice in many sports this fall as is being done across many conferences in Minnesota. It is likely schools will try to schedule a few regional nonconference opponents.

River Falls was originally slated to move football conferences this fall, shifting to the Mississippi Valley to play teams largely in the La Crosse area. But the WIAA approved the Wildcats to remain in the Big Rivers this fall to keep games closer to home. New Richmond had the choice to make the jump to the Big Rivers for football only, and on Monday took the offer. That gives the Big Rivers Conference six conference teams sans the Eau Claire schools and Superior, all of which will play a spring football schedule.

That means Big Rivers schools will have five conference football games. Teams are allowed to play seven regular-season contests. Hall said schools are “still looking at” options for the football schedule and beyond, and area ADs are scrambling to find more games for their soccer and volleyball teams.

Postseason play across all sports this fall is still to be determined. As Hall told the River Falls School Board on Monday, “The word tradition is taken out of our vocabulary this year.”

“These are new ideas, they’re all new things. We’ll try some things. Some things will be hard to accomplish,” he said. “But the biggest thing is everybody’s got to be in the same boat. We’ve got to get the politics and everything out. These are the River Falls rules. This is what we’re going to do. This is what the Big Rivers is going to do. And we’re going to do it safely, and hopefully our kids will have a great experience.”