TSSAA adopts contingency plan for football, girls soccer, guidelines for practices and fan attendance

The Tennessee Secondary School Athletics Association finally has a contingency plan in place for the two fall contact sports — football and girls soccer — that will be impacted by Gov. Bill Lee’s state of emergency.

The TSSAA Board of Control voted to approve those contingency plans, today.

They will take effect if the governor’s executive order implementing the state of emergency is not lifted, or if high school sports are not exempted from the no-contact order as college and professional sports have been, in time for the sports season to begin on time. The executive order is currently scheduled to expire on August 29.

If the governor’s executive order is still in place as of August 10, the girls soccer contingency plan will kick in. The regular season will essentially be bumped back two weeks, with the first games beginning the week of September 7. The state championships would be bumped back two weeks, as well, and be played November 11-14.

That move would allow the girls soccer regular season to maintain its current length of 10 weeks. Schools that do not play the maximum number of games allowed by TSSAA before being eliminated from the postseason would be permitted to schedule additional games.

For football, the Board of Control voted for Option 2 that was presented by TSSAA earlier this month — an 8-game regular season with the number of playoff qualifiers slashed in half from 32 to 16. However, the board also adopted a so-called hybrid plan that was unveiled by TSSAA just days ago.

Option 2 assumes that Gov. Lee’s executive order will not be lifted in whole or for high school sports teams prior to August 29. There will be three weeks of practice beginning August 30, with the first games being played on September 18. TSSAA will set teams’ region schedules, and coaches will then be charged with quickly filling out the remainder of their schedule with non-region games. Current home-and-home contracts between non-region opponents that are in their second year will be canceled. In each public school classification, the region champion and region runner-up will qualify for the playoffs. Teams that do not qualify for the playoffs will be allowed to schedule two additional games.

The hybrid option adopted by the Board of Control on Wednesday will kick in conditionally if Gov. Lee’s executive order is lifted early, preventing there from being several weeks wasted before the first football games on September 18.

Under the hybrid option, there will still be three weeks of practice before the first games. If the governor’s executive order is lifted prior to August 3, the season will move forward as currently scheduled. If the governor’s executive order is lifted after August 3 and the first week of the schedule is lost, TSSAA will reschedule the region games that are to be played that week — there are only three of them statewide — and teams will play the last nine weeks of the regular season without change. If the executive order is lifted after August 3 and the first two weeks of the schedule are lost, TSSAA will reschedule the region games that are to be played those weeks — there are 13 across the state in Week 2 — and teams will play the final eight weeks of the season without change. If the third week of the season is lost, which is when most teams begin region play, the entire season will be scrapped, and TSSAA will reschedule region games with coaches left to find non-region games to fill out the 8-game schedule before the playoffs begin.