As we continue to patiently await a response to our resumption plans submitted to the state’s COVID-19 Response team, commissioner Rhonda Blanford-Green tweeted the following on Friday:

We appreciate the many state, health and educational officials doing their due diligence for the safe return of the 26 remaining HS activities and athletics for the 2020-2021 competitive season! We patiently and respectfully await your decisions.

— Rhonda BlanfordGreen (@RhondaCHSAA) July 31, 2020

(Lisa Hayes/StillOfTheMomentPhotography.com)

Softball and boys tennis have been given approval to begin play this fall.

The sports were approved as part of CHSAA’s return-to-play plan submitted to the state’s COVID-19 Response team within the Governor’s office.

CHSAA commissioner Rhonda Blanford-Green shared the news with member schools during the annual All-School Summit on Wednesday.

Softball and boys tennis can begin practice as scheduled on Aug. 10, and competition on Aug. 13.

Both sports will have modifications to their seasons in order to ensure they comply with current national, state and local health guidelines. Note that the resumption of any activity or sport is subject to change based upon any changes to national, state or local guidelines.

As previously communicated, boys golf has also been approved to begin, and the sport will start practice on Aug. 3, and competition on Aug. 6.

The CHSAA office is anticipating a decision from the COVID-19 Response team on the remaining sports by the end of the week. That said, there is an understanding of the careful consideration that is necessary at the state level as everyone navigates the COVID-19 pandemic.

Upon approval of the submitted plan, the anticipation is that a full calendar can be shared for the 2020-21 season.

(Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)

Boys golf practice will start as scheduled on Aug. 3, as the sport is able to be played under the current national, state, county and CHSAA health guidelines as they pertain to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic.

Competition is scheduled to begin on Aug. 6.

Boys golf was not included in plans submitted to the state officials for approval because the sport is able to play under the current guidelines.

The Association is anticipating an announcement soon regarding the full calendar for all other sports and activities, once approved by state officials.

(CHSAANow.com)

CHSAA commissioner Rhonda Blanford-Green provided the following update on Thursday regarding sports and activities in 2020-21:

“Our office supports and respects the time taken at the state level to evaluate our proposed options for resuming athletics and activities for the 2020-2021 school year. Their timeline is our timeline, and we will be ready to play, with planned modifications, once approved.

“We are appreciative of the guidance and leadership from the CHSAA Board of Directors and the Sports Medicine Advisory Committee as we look to the 2020-2021 school year.

“The CHSAA staff will continue to advocate within our submitted proposals to conduct all programs within the Governor’s safety guidelines, phases and requirements.

“We will keep our school communities informed and we will provide definitive answers and timelines once they are approved by the Governor’s office.

“State, educational and athletic leaders are all working together in these fluid times to get our students, coaches, officials and support staff safely back to the courts, fields, stages, pools, and classrooms.”

(Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)

We understand the desire for more info as our office continues to plan for the safe return of athletics and activities in the 2020-21 school year.

So our commissioner, Rhonda Blanford-Green, took to Twitter on Tuesday to answer questions on that topic.

Know that we are advocating for a safe return to play.

Follow Rhonda on Twitter here: Follow @rhondachsaa

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We posted some of her answers to questions below.

On fall sports timeline:

Once our plans receive approval by state and health officials, we will communicate next steps. We are extremely optimistic about the collaborative direction of discussions. I reiterate the word “patience”, we have some challenges but we are moving🤞🏾 https://t.co/eJo60wQBl2

— Rhonda BlanfordGreen (@RhondaCHSAA) July 7, 2020

More about the timeline for announcing plans:

That is the estimated timeline but we aren’t the only organization on the state, health, education official’s agenda. Resuming Education is the priority and we will support and compliment the direction of our member schools when they have definitives. https://t.co/AfECzBJ5op

— Rhonda BlanfordGreen (@RhondaCHSAA) July 7, 2020

On switching seasons:

I have not seen a state association definitively announce swapping seasons. They, like us are exploring all ideas. The idea was just voted down by two Associations. Our goal is to protect traditional seasons, three sport athletes and our member rural/small school opportunities. https://t.co/LYmUIdlaE4

— Rhonda BlanfordGreen (@RhondaCHSAA) July 7, 2020

On quarantining:

State and local health guidelines for reporting, contact tracing and quarantine will be strictly adhered to once we resume. No different than the current protocol during summer-local control coach/athlete/team contact. https://t.co/1gvOsVb2Oy

— Rhonda BlanfordGreen (@RhondaCHSAA) July 7, 2020

On venues:

We currently have some challenges with previous site availability and capacity limitations but it is July! We don’t have contracts finalized because dates are fluid but if given the chance, our staff will find the venues🙌🏾 https://t.co/eTBsNZ6lnQ

— Rhonda BlanfordGreen (@RhondaCHSAA) July 7, 2020

On collaboration with other states:

Since March, 51 Execs and Commissioners have continuously shared our thoughts, plans and frustrations. The pandemic has brought us closer together by the common goal-safely resuming HS programs. Awareness of 51 national plans allows us to construct models specific to CO! https://t.co/n5McwwcBJa

— Rhonda BlanfordGreen (@RhondaCHSAA) July 7, 2020

On a potential resurgence:

A COVID-19 resurgence and a stall with state reopening phases could disrupt our planned start dates for fall but we are moving towards resuming all sports and activities with potential contingencies for 2020-21! https://t.co/XczhUBc9Kp

— Rhonda BlanfordGreen (@RhondaCHSAA) July 8, 2020

(Dustin Price/dustinpricephotography.com)

We caught up with CHSAA commissioner Rhonda Blanford-Green to talk about the upcoming fall sports season, where other states are, in-person learning, and timelines.

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Question: As we head into July, a big question that we keep seeing is, “Where we are with starting football this fall?”

Blanford-Green: 51 state high school associations, colleges and professional organizations are all being faced with that same question.

Mid-July will be a pivotal time period for assessment and what our state government and public health officials will allow within the guidelines. Those guidelines will ultimately determine the Association’s ability to move forward either fully, with modifications or with incremental sport-specific start dates.

Our staff continues to prepare for a fall sport season.

Q: There is some talk about football players transferring to other states, such as Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana, in order to play. Are those states at a different place than we are? Have they said they will definitely have a season?

Blanford-Green: None of the aforementioned states have definitively said, “We will have football.” They have all experienced a rise in Coronavirus cases and outbreaks in the past two weeks. Their state and health officials have recently taken more restrictive measures on public gatherings and social distancing, including a pause on sports.

In fact, the Governor of Arizona just pushed back on athletic contact, all start dates, which translates to delays with practices and competitive start dates for high schools.

Several states have continued their spring moratorium on coach/athlete contact either by state or health orders.

Colorado has incrementally allowed coach/athlete contact for all sports within the local controlled safety guidelines. Colorado coaches and athletes have been given more latitude to begin summer conditioning and competitive readiness more so than some of our counterparts across the nation.

I can respect the decisions of parents and players to seek definitive answers, but I can assure you that no state association has offered a guarantee that they will play. We are all working to make it happen, knowing that the final decisions aren’t within our control.

Q: Will students have to be fully back in the classroom for sports to resume?

Blanford-Green: Our bylaws currently have provisions for non-traditional educational models such as home school and online learning.

We are fully prepared for sport and activity implementation to meet the needs of our membership. Our goal is to support our schools and student-participants wherever they land when final decisions are made for education this fall.

There are many challenges ahead but educational leaders across this state are working diligently to return to levels of normalcy with the safety of our students, and those who support them, in the forefront.

Q: Is there anything else you want to add?

Blanford-Green: I understand where students, coaches, and parents are frustrated. Our staff is equally frustrated. We are ready to go, but we are not in a position or place where we can decide to “just let the kids play.”

We don’t get to play infectious disease doctors or disregard our state and public health guidelines. There can’t be definitive answers when our country and state continues to fluctuate within their safe-to-reopen phases.

(Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)

We are encouraged by the recent guidelines from the Governor’s office that align with the Association’s plans to resume all education-based athletics and activities for the 2020-21 school year.

The CHSAA associate and assistant commissioners are proceeding with guidelines and standards for resuming fall sports on their scheduled start dates.

The recent “Safer at Home” and “Protect our Neighbors” guidelines from the state have provided our staff with more flexibility to construct regular season, postseason and contingency plans for fall programs.

All sport-specific plans will have the oversight and review of the CHSAA’s sports medicine advisory committee, which includes mental health professionals, before they are released to the membership for implementation.

As our educational leaders work diligently to construct their “Return to Learn” models, our staff is preparing to adjust and modify our programs to meet the diverse educational platforms that will be introduced this fall.

We are a statewide organization, so our task becomes more complicated when educational and health mandates vary at district levels, much less from county to county. Although we are moving forward, we know that our plans must be flexible and subject to change to provide equitable participation opportunities across the state.

A shutdown in one area, impacting one classification, would send our staff back to the white board. The state and county data, and decisions, are fluctuating so we continue to plan for the knowns of today and the unknowns of tomorrow.

Our primary and only objective, while acknowledging that we are still in the midst of a national pandemic, will be to resume athletics and activities with the safety and well-being of our participants, coaches, officials, staff and school communities in the forefront.

(Kai Casey/CHSAANow.com)

In a tweet Saturday morning, CHSAA commissioner Rhonda Blanford-Green announced that the staff “will begin constructing safety and implementation guidelines to resume ALL athletics and activities, including football, beginning this fall.”

CHSAA staff will begin constructing safety and implementation guidelines to resume “ALL” athletics and activities including football beginning this fall🙌🏾

— Rhonda BlanfordGreen (@RhondaCHSAA) June 6, 2020

Since the cancellation of spring sports, the CHSAA staff has been laser-focused on preparing to resume all sports and activities in the 2020-21 school year.

The recent relaxation within state and health guidelines has allowed the CHSAA staff to plan more definitively for the 2020-21 school year.

(Ray Chen/ArrayPhoto.com)

The CHSAA team is working non-stop, with some challenges ahead, to resume all athletics and activities in their designated seasons.

As a membership and an office, our state is a national leader in student mental health education, inclusion and diversity, and participation opportunities per capita. So, trust that we know our “Why”!

We value diverse opinions as we navigate our next steps. So to ease the hysteria regarding having a voice, there were parents on the task force, including one with an incoming football senior and looking to play at the next level. Dad played collegiate baseball.

Furthermore, our office is made up of former high school, collegiate and professional athletes, and Hall of Fame inductees. We are former coaches, administrators and officials. We are parents, including parents of current, future, and former high school athletes.

We get it!

You can trust that my decisions aren’t motivated by politics, fear, or threats of liability or legal action. Nor are they motivated by money. We have lost tremendously during this pandemic, without state basketball championships, spring championships, and refunding of membership participation fees.

We are dedicated and committed to resuming athletics and activities in the 2020-2021 school year responsibly: within the proposed statewide educational models, all viewpoints of health data, state and county guidelines, opinions — including parents, coaches, educators — and in communication with other state associations across the country.

This will be our timeline and we will begin to limit our share of information as it appears our transparency has opened us for attack. We will hold future decisions closer to the vest to reduce your anxiety and the need to attack the very group that is advocating — no, fighting — through these unknowns and chaos for your children.

Trust that we are focused on resuming all activities and athletics because we know participation supports the social, mental and physical well-being of all our students. We provide you with the state and national stats, but I do appreciate the reminders.

We are in this together, and we will make decisions not through threats and personal attacks but with the safety of students — it is bigger than low risk populations — coaches, officials crews (we need them), score keepers, ticket takers, security, volunteers, managers, bus drivers, custodians, vendors, site administrators, and parents in the forefront.

No answers are definitive at this time because the state and health guidelines are fluid, but we are moving with intent towards fully resuming.

(Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com)

CHSAA’s Resocialization Task Force met on Wednesday, and built the foundations of a plan which aims to resume sports and activities during the 2020-21 school year.

The task force was comprised of pediatricians, orthopedists, sports medicine doctors, athletic trainers, superintendents, school administrators, coaches and CHSAA staff.

“I would like to thank the members of the Resocialization Task Force,” said CHSAA commissioner Rhonda Blanford-Green. “This was extremely difficult, with diverse opinions and challenges across the state. At the end of the day, everybody in the room was committed to reconnecting sports and activities to the educational platform. So that gave us a common purpose. Getting our kids back to activities that support their social, mental and physical health is our priority.

“If it were easy to come up with these decisions, professional and collegiate sports would already have definitive answers with the amount of resources at their disposal.”

The group used a document created by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) as a guideline, and also looked at various other guidance from other states, as well as national-level sport organizations.

They were also informed by a survey of the CHSAA membership, which included more than 900 responses from coaches, athletic directors, district athletics directors, superintendents and principals over the course of 18 hours.

“If that doesn’t tell you how important education-based participation is to the state of Colorado, no other data points will,” Blanford-Green said.

The task force acknowledged that the goal in returning to play has to include mitigating the risk, as it is not possible to eliminate it entirely.

“As administrators, we have to recognize that we have a role in mitigating risk, and providing a safe environment for resuming athletics and activities,” Blanford-Green said. “Those decisions will take time as guidelines become more relaxed, and medical guidance speaks to specific sports.

“We have to stay focused: We are not youth sports, club sports or summer programs,” she added. “We have to make decisions aligned with where the resumption of education will be at the start of the 2020-21 school year.”

The task force classified CHSAA’s 29 sports into three categories: lower risk, moderate risk, and higher risk.

Lower Risk

• Boys golf
• Boys tennis
• Skiing
• Girls swimming*
• Girls golf
• Boys swimming*
• Girls tennis
• Unified Bowling
• Sideline Cheer

Note that swimming can only be categorized as lower risk if the CHSAA guidelines (for example, social distancing) for swimming events are met. Otherwise, swimming would be considered a moderate risk sport.

Moderate Risk

• Cross country
• Field hockey
• Gymnastics*
• Boys soccer
• Softball
• Volleyball
• Baseball
• Boys lacrosse
• Girls lacrosse
• Girls soccer
• Track*

Note that track and field and gymnastics are considered moderate when considering the sport as a whole, due to the sharing of equipment, surfaces and social distancing.

Higher Risk

• Football
• Competitive Cheer/Dance
• Basketball
• Ice hockey
• Wrestling

The categorization of CHSAA’s three activities — music, speech, and student leadership — will continue to be examined as guidance comes forward from various organizations and agencies.

The following definition of these categories comes from the NFHS document:

• Lower Risk: Sports that can be conducted with social distancing or individually with no sharing of equipment or the ability to clean the equipment between use by competitors.
• Moderate Risk: Sports that involve close, sustained contact, but with protective equipment in place that may reduce the likelihood of respiratory particle transmission between participants OR intermittent close contact OR group sports OR sports that use equipment that can’t be cleaned between participants.
• Higher Risk: Sports that involve close, sustained contact between participants, lack of significant protective barriers, and high probability that respiratory particles will be transmitted between participants.

The task force recommended that the CHSAA staff explore beginning lower-risk sports at the start of the 2020-21 school year.

“Our goal is to administrate all activities and athletics in 2020-21 school year,” Blanford-Green said. “Within that goal, our office and our membership must be willing to think outside the box. The traditional structure of a fall, spring or winter season has to be reexamined as resuming at any level could look different. We have to think about the categorized levels of sports, and the ability to resume them safely. Those must be our bench marks.”

For sports categorized as moderate and higher-risk, the task force wants CHSAA to gather definitive interpretations of state guidelines and medical data on when it would be safe to initiate their seasons. At this point, CHSAA is not able to move forward with sports classified as moderate and high-risk. The hope is to be able to find an opportunity to play those sports at some point during the 2020-21 school year.

“This is the first week in June,” Blanford-Green said. “We don’t want to get in front of the guidelines or medical data that hasn’t been clearly interpreted and make rash decisions which could negatively impact sports that could potentially start at some point this fall.”

The task force meeting helped to set the foundation and standards for returning to play. Decisions made moving forward will be made with a combination of various resources and experts.

“There were levels of frustration throughout the day. There’s no modern-day template for resuming play after a pandemic,” Blanford-Green said. “But I feel like we came away with some actionable items, some much-needed definitions, to move to the next steps.

“I can’t thank this task force enough for their time, effort and expertise as we navigated through uncharted territory to resocialize sports under diverse guidelines across the state,” she added.