CIAC

CIAC Has Plans for a Fall Sports Season

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The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference has made a decision on the fate of school sports this fall.

There will be a fall sports season, but the schedule will be shortened and include regionalized scheduling, officials confirmed Thursday. They said they have not determined how they will structure the tournament experience.

In June, the CIAC released guidelines for a return to sports with the start of the new school year. The guidelines classified which fall sports are considered low-risk, moderate-risk, and high-risk, as well as guidance on in-person training, and safety measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ezekiel Emanuel, vice provost for Global Initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke at a conference with Gov. Ned Lamont Thursday and said that he did not see how football, or any contact sports, could be played.

"We need to be safe, and put safety first and I think contact sports are not a good idea," he said.

CIAC executive director Glenn Lungarini responded to the remarks.

“One of the sentences on our cover page of the program is ‘this plan remains fluid. It is in a state of perpetual evaluation and we need to continue to gather data and look at the health metrics in Connecticut and information that we know on sports as it comes in and becomes available," he said. "We understand that what we have today can change based on what the health metrics and the recommendations are tomorrow. But we recognize that our student athletes really need sports, not just the educational component of this to truly come back to that school experience.”

The CIAC canceled interscholastic tournaments in March and called off the spring sports season when Connecticut was at its peak of coronavirus cases and deaths during late April and early May.

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