At 9:02 AM. Monday morning, the California Interscholastic Federation released its schedule of athletics for the 2020-2021 academic school year with sports beginning in December or January.

The CIF announced a modified season with each of the 10 Sections able to “release their own calendar to reflect regular season starting and ending dates and Section playoffs. It is anticipated that most Section start dates will commence in December 2020 or January 2021.”

The news was highly anticipated and speculated upon, as other states such as New Mexico postponed fall contact sports until the spring semester.

Football is listed in the fall semester in the sports calendar and basketball in the spring. Football has a last day for section playoffs of April 10, 2021 and last day for regional/state championships of April 17, 2021. Basketball’s two dates for section playoffs and state competitions are June 12, 2021 and June 19, 2021.

The move to delay the start of sports was out of necessity following the news that the two largest school districts in the state, Los Angeles and San Diego Unified, will not start the academic year with on-campus classes.

The uncertain reality is that the COVID-19 spread will dictate if students return to their high school campuses and in turn play high school sports this year. California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on July 19th that schools can offer in-person classes if their county is off the state monitoring list for 14 straight days.

An interesting change announced in the release is that “CIF Sections may allow for athletic activity to potentially resume under the summer period rules of the local Section. Also, given this calendar change, the CIF has temporarily suspended Bylaws 600-605 (Outside Competition) in all sports for the 2020-21 school year.”

That means athletes can compete with their club teams year-around including in their given school year. An example could be an athlete playing a football game on Friday March 19th and having a 7-on-7 tournament then the next day. Basketball players could potentially play all spring with their both their high school and summer teams before the high school season ends on June 12th or 19th.

One of the other consequences of this move is some of the top football senior athletes will not play. Some due to personal choice to not play two seasons in a calendar year and some due to early enrollment in college in January. Westlake defensive lineman Victory Vaka already posted a message on Twitter skipping his senior season and enrolling at Texas A&M University in January. He will not be the last one to announce that decision.

https://cifstate.org/covid-19/7.20.20_release