Junior high school sports postponed
The Southern Illinois Junior High School Athletic Association, SIJHSAA, has voted to postpone all sports amid the ongoing coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic.
Union County area schools which are listed as members of the SIJHSAA website include:
Anna Junior High School, Buncombe, Century, Cobden, Cypress, Dongola, Egyptian, Jonesboro, Lick Creek and Shawnee Junior High School.
The SIJHSAA posted the following special announcement, dated Nov. 5, on its website:
The SIJHSAA Board of Control held a special meeting today, mainly dealing with the girls and boys basketball situation.
As you know the IDPH has moved basketball to a higher risk sport in the Governor’s All Sports Policy.
This change by the IDPH will not enable schools to participate in this sport at the present time.
Governor Pritzker has stated that basketball isn’t canceled, its postponed and moved to the spring.
In turn the Illinois High School Association has basically stated that the IDPH has ignored the SMAC-IHSA Sport Medicine Committee’s Return To Play Guidelines for basketball.
The IHSA has announced that they will follow the SMAC Basktball Guidelines and will not follow the recommendation of the Governor, IDPH, and ISBE.
With this situation that is going on between the IHSA and the governor-IDPH-ISBE, the SIJHSAA Board of Control met to give some guidance to its member schools on where we are going with basketball and upcoming winter sports.
A motion was made to postpone all SIJHSAA sports until approved IDPH Return To Play Guidelines are in place.
The main concern of the SIJHSAA Board of Control was liability issues that could occur dealing with association insurance and liability issues that could arise for member schools, if participating in violation of IDPH guidelines.
Thus, at this point girls and boys basketball practices set to start on November 16 and contests slated to start on November 30 are presently postponed.
If circumstances change, the SIJHSAA will notify member schools of updated information for basketball and other winter sports.
The SIJHSAA will monitor what is occuring concerning basketball and other winter sport activities. The Board of Control will meet again on November 19, 2020 to review these issues.
Greg Hale, Executive Director, SIJHSAA