In response to the recent letter that the "big school" coaches in Southern Arizona signed and sent in to the AIA requesting that the football season be moved to the Spring, I polled "small school", 1A-3A, coaches about what affect that would have on their athletic programs. The answers range in degrees of length but the overall feeling is that other programs would suffer if football was moved.

"Man I have so many thoughts on this subject. 1st off we have to make sure that we are safe, because we are in a whole new territory with a pandemic and athletics.

But as far as moving sports in general to the Spring, it definitely will not work for 1A, but I'm sure you could make that argument all the way up to 3A, maybe not every school but most.

At Bagdad 73% of our Football kids play multiple sports, 100% of our Varsity Basketball Team played multiple sports & 93% of our Varsity Baseball played another sport, & the 1 that didn't was involved in HS RODEO, so really 100%.

If all sports were played in the Spring, I'm telling you at our school, we would not have a basketball team and football / Baseball would be tough. I'm assuming that would be a harsh choice for our kids. What would they choose & why? We might not have neither, if we did it would be one sport. Then if that was the case I'm assuming that kids would have to choose a sport they might not be there 1st choice to play, bc do I give in to help my friends out and play the other sport or do they choose what they love knowing there teammates they grew up with playing choose the other sport. It's a No Win Situation, to put kids in that spot. If I was to guess, I'm thinking both of my QB's and #1 WR would choose Baseball. They all play baseball throughout the yr. So then how's that make our kids that are football players 1st feel. I doubt that's motivating. I just don't believe we can win putting the kids on this spot. It's not giving them the opportunity they deserve. Are you getting your best experience in any sport? There's no way.

For me and many other small school coaches, even when I coached in the 5a ranks. There's coaches that coach multiple sports. I coach baseball and football. So am I supposed to keep coaching both or pick one. Honestly I love coaching both and that is a no win situation for me. If I did coach both, how are we supposed to manage that? Does that mean athletes can play both? Are we splitting days for practice? I doubt we are doing both, but I honestly don't see it working. If it did, it wouldn't be the true experience.

If attending school was to be pushed back to Oct, id rather shorten seasons and have them, even if that meant Fall Sports goes for a 2 month or 6 week regular season then playoffs. WINTER & Spring Sports does the same. I think for a one time deal Spring Sports could finish State into Summer.

I'd personally hate to see kids miss out on anything. Not only sports but clubs are vital for our students mental health and well being. I feel like they have already missed out on so much.

I would be ok with switching sports around if you could guarantee all kids would get the experience they love. Just not sure the best way to do that."

"My biggest concern is the amount of two sport athletes we have at TVHS. Off the top of my head we have 8-10 that play football and baseball. A couple of those play basketball as well. My Varsity baseball team has 1 player who only plays baseball. I am also an assistant varsity football coach, first year. It would also affect coaching staffs.

I want every athlete to have the chance to play their sport of choice. It will just be difficult to field competitive teams if all the sports are going on at the same time."

"Because we have not been given any indication of the possibility of a spring season, I have no idea what that would look like. My question would be, are we playing our season DURING the same time as the spring seasons? Or are we adjusting our seasons so that football runs its own time. IF we play during the same time my thoughts are that would not work well for us.

In our corner of the world I believe that would be detrimental to programs at our school. In my opinion I would rather see our season pushed back to October/November before we decide to move it to spring. We, just like our small school opponents, have many multisport athletes in order to fill our rosters. My fear is that we are forcing many athletes to choose to either: miss 2 straight seasons in Baseball or Track, or miss a Football season.

Upperclassmen will have an easier choice to make because they most likely have a primary sport, but I fear this would decimate participation in JV rosters for both football and spring sports. I also have coaches with sport conflicts, My offensive coordinator is the Varsity Assistant Coach for softball who is very competitive as well. It would not be a good look for his softball program to miss 2 seasons with Softball to coach football this year, especially if he is looking to become a head coach in the future. My JV head coach is also the golf coach that puts him in a tough spot as well.

As a logistic issue, we struggle enough as it is to schedule trip drivers for our sports and busses to accommodate all sports. If we were to move to spring I am questioning our ability to accommodate Football, Baseball, Softball, Track, and Golf. We also have a ref shortage in AIA, it's hard enough to have a full crew for football games. Most (if not all) of our refs who referee football for our region also ref baseball &/or Softball.

Ultimately, my kids want to play football and one trait that our staff and our kids have developed by attending Payson High School is an ability to adjust and find a way to get things done. If we move to spring we will encounter some tremendous obstacles but we will find a way to get it done and would be extremely excited to be (almost) guaranteed a football season. No matter what the state decides to do, If there is a football season, you will not hear complaints from me."

"I am opposed to trying to move fall sports to the spring. For the 1A- 3A schools, this is highly impractical due to the very high number of multi sport athletes. Forcing them to choose between one sport or the other OR split their focus between two sports at the same time would be unfair to all involved. Logistically, this would also prove to be difficult. Transportation demands already stretch our district resources during regular operations, and game workers often My first choice is that we go ahead and get things started on Aug. 17 as currently planned. If that is not possible, I would be in favor of moving the start date for fall sports back a little further and playing a shortened season from late Sept/early October through December if necessary. Winter sports would need to be pushed back to after the winter break with a shortened season as well. Spring sports suffered the brunt of the closure last spring. I am in favor of getting a full season for them this coming spring if possible."

"Thanks for reaching out for some small school perspective.

Arizona Lutheran Academy has been following all the guidelines, especially the ones from national strength and conditioning association for our summer training. We haven’t done any football specific work, just weight training and speed/agility training. We would be ready to go with an August 17 start date and only 4 weeks to prepare for a game. That’s nothing new to our program...last year we had 3 official weeks of practice before playing our first games.

I’m perfectly okay with pushing back the start date for competitions in football and other sports to later in the fall. Thankfully, Covid numbers like Transmission rate are declining.

I've communicated this with 2A conference and AIA but we could have October 2 as our first football contest, 8 game regular season, Finals are Dec. 18. All winter and spring season starting and ending dates would need to be pushed back 3-4 weeks also.

In my opinion, all seasons should bear the brunt of moving the fall sports.

A spring football season that runs at the same time as track or baseball would hurt our athletic program. Baseball would struggle to field a team because athletes would choose the other 2 sports. Some of my best athletes also run track and should be in the top 5 at state in their respective events. Sure, they could try to do both football and track, but it wouldn't be fair to any of them. I'd hate for them to need to choose.

I had 4 varsity players that went down last year for the season. 2 with broken arms requiring surgery and 2 torn ACL's. Those athletes are all now 100% and ready to go for the fall. If it happens in the spring, then they don't have enough time to recover. Also, the very nature of the physical play of football requires more time off then a spring to fall season. I also love the fact that kids mature over 1 year and work in the weight room shows. A spring season would minimize that."

"This would depend what that model looked like. If the AIA tried to play Football at the same time as Baseball or Track and Field one or more of those sports would not be able to sustain. If they used a model like NM we would have no issue field a team."

"If football was moved to the Spring at Coolidge athletes would have to choose a sport and I don't think that is fair to them or their teammates.

I think we should move Spring sports to the Fall because they are the most social distancing sports we have. Then move the Fall sports to a Winter schedule then move Winter sports to the Spring. If we move one, we have to move them all."

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