PIAA urges winter sports teams to ‘set the foundation’ by starting practice Friday

By: Chris Harlan
Wednesday, November 18, 2020 | 9:08 PM

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The PIAA is encouraging winter sports teams to “set the foundation” by starting preseason practice Friday, if possible.

With covid-19 making the future uncertain, PIAA executive director Bob Lombardi said teams should accomplish as much as they can as soon as they can. Friday marks the first day winter teams can practice.

The PIAA has preseason requirements for teams to meet before starting regular-season competition. For example, basketball teams must complete 15 preseason practices, whether the team starts now or later.

Teams need five practices before their first scrimmage.

“We’re trying to get people to set the foundation, so that if they do have a hiccup, you can adjust and adapt,” Lombardi said. “If we learned anything from the fall, the people who started earlier were able to handle interruptions easier than those who started late because they ran against time and didn’t have any room in the schedule.”

If basketball teams start workouts Friday and complete 15 practices in the next three weeks, they’d have almost 10 weeks left to play their 22 games, Lombardi said.

“If you wait until, let’s say, January 31 to start, well you’ve got to get three weeks of practice in. Now that takes you to about the 18th of February,” he said. “You’re only going to have two weeks to play. You can’t play 22 games in 14 days.”

The PIAA board met Wednesday and made no changes to the winter schedule. That’s not to say there won’t be any in the future. The PIAA board has supported starting the regular season on time, but Lombardi hinted about significant changes that could await in the postseason.

Winter sports likely will follow the plan used in the fall, when the PIAA reduced state playoffs to include only district champions in team sports. Individual sports like swimming and wrestling could have fewer qualifiers.

“Are we going to have a 32-team bracket in basketball?” Lombardi said. “Are we going to have all those qualifiers in swimming and wrestling? We are pretty sure we may be shortening those down, because if we learned from the fall, by having a champions-only tournament gave us the ability to get something in (during the postseason) along with a good regular season.”

But the postseason is months away, so the preseason is the PIAA’s focus for now.

“Our feeling is, if schools are able, they should try to start on the first practice day,” Lombardi said, “and get as many of their practices in as possible.”

In other board business, the PIAA tentatively set its schedule for the football championships.

On Nov. 27, the Class A final is 11 a.m., followed by 3A at 3:30 p.m. and 5A at 8 p.m. On Nov. 28, the Class 2A is 11 a.m., with 4A at 3:30 and 6A at 8 p.m.

Lombardi said order could change to accommodate travel if requested by a school.

The PIAA board voted down a policy change that would have required three days of practice before returning to competition if a team’s practice schedule was interrupted by a temporary school closure for four or more days.

Only three board members supported the proposal.

Currently, a team could resume competition immediately without practice.

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.