At a certain point, the calendar left the people in charge of Nova Scotia high school sports with no choice but to cancel provincial championships for the winter season.
Nova Scotia School Athletic Federation executive director Stephen Gallant said on Friday competition in basketball, hockey, curling, skiing, snowboarding and wrestling will stop after regionals.
"The restriction is still in effect that you're not allowed to play outside your region," Gallant said. "You can only play the teams you would regularly play so our teams aren't supposed to travel from one area of the province to another to play. That's one restriction that wasn't lifted yesterday so that's a provincial limitation. Obviously you can't have a provincial championship if you can't leave your region.
"So what we have done is we've allowed the dates that had been set for hockey and basketball to be pushed back to get more time for games. Now what we've said is they can have regional championships right up until that end date. What we want to do is have more kids involved for as long as we can."
Gallant said it was a decision he and the NSSAF board tried to leave as late as possible. But there are certain realities that took the matter out of their hands.
"For hockey, the ice comes out of a lot of rinks on April 1st so that's another challenge," he said. "And rental agreements would have needed to be done weeks ago so we just weren't in a position to make that commitment at that time. The last time Dr. (Robert) Strang made an annoucement, the board met and said 'OK these are the restrictions for a month' so we had to make decisions. The rinks needed answers so it was really a calendar issue."
"We are also running into other calendar issues," he added. "We've got a March break coming up and it becomes very difficult for us because we do have spring sports that are also important to us. We already pushed those spring sports back a couple of weeks but then you're getting into May and then June with exams so we are up against a solid deadline there. There's no extending into June because the school year's coming to an end and there are all those things that aren't flexible and we can't interfere with."
Like with almost everything to do with the pandemic, Gallant said it has been hard for everyone to manage the expectations and morale of the athletes. It is especially tough when changes are made to the restrictions on short notice.
"I know the athletic directors and the coaches and the administrations at our schools are working hard to try to keep our kids focused on school on the opportunities that arise," he said. "I think everybody understands we have no control over the situation as it goes with COVID, so all we can do is just adapt to and adopt the restrictions as they come up. Working through the different scenarios is certainly a challenge for everybody but the hard work is being done at the school level."
The flip side is that it's worth remembering how lucky Nova Scotia is to have youth and high school sports at all. It can be discouraging to have to deal with crowd limits and unpredictable stops and starts, but the fall high school schedule rolled out without too much interruption and most minor leagues have at least been able to have some type of season, as well as some practices.
"We are very fortunate as a province," Gallant said. "I was on a call recently with my counterparts (from other provinces) and there's been no school sports in Quebec since October 15th. Ontario is cancelled for the whole year, New Brunswick has been off and on, and Newfoundland is off again. So we've actually been very fortunate to get in what we have."
With the spring sports season rapidly approaching, Gallant couldn't offer any new optimism about squeezing in a high school football campaign. It is traditionally a fall sport but that wasn't possible this school year. But, again, current government restrictions will be the major impediment to pivoting to having it in the spring, as was discussed back in August.
"At the moment it's still not possible because the maximum number for non-socially distanced activity is 60," Gallant said. "That number would not allow us to run football.
"We've spoken with Football Nova Scotia, and we agree, to be able to play safely that number has to be at least 100. They don't want all the kids playing both ways because that's when they get tired and injuries happen."
"I'm not saying never, ever because with every one of our decisions we've waited until the last possible moment," he added. "And I know it's frustrating for our schools who would like us to make a decision now. But we'd prefer to wait longer because if Dr. Strang says something today and we make a decision from that, we don't know if things might change soon after. It can become very difficult to take things back so what we've been trying to do is tell people is to keep going with your seasons and if we can offer more, we will."
