The long, strange trip is reaching its one-year milestone

Matt’s Bleacher Shots

Driving home from La Crosse Saturday night after the WIAA Division 2 state gymnastics meet, I couldn’t help but think about how a year-long circle had been completed.

From this sports editor’s viewpoint, the last time anything was normal was the day last year’s gymnastics state meet ended. That Saturday morning and afternoon were spent at the meet in Wisconsin Rapids. After that, there was an hour’s drive to Wild Rose where the Rib Lake boys basketball team beat the host Wildcats in a WIAA Division 5 regional final and secured a spot in the sectional semifinals set for five days later.

The other thing I vividly remember about that day is the Wisconsin Badgers beat Indiana to secure a share of the Big Ten men’s basketball regular-season championship and had all the momentum in the world heading into the Big Ten tournament that was on tap for later in the week.

Yeah, you heard about this coronavirus on the national news, but basketball post-seasons were going and the start of baseball season was fast approaching. That virus thing isn’t a big deal, right?

As we all found out a few days later, yes, it was a pretty big deal.

It’s been nearly a year and it’s still a big deal. There are negative ways to look at it in how so much still feels so far from the way it was before and positive ways to look at it in how three different vaccines are now being distributed in this country and the light at the end of the tunnel may be getting brighter.

From the sports perspective, it can be frustrating to think about all the hoops, roadblocks and hurdles that teams, administrators and organizers have had to go through to keep competition going or what fans and parents have had to go through to even see their kids compete. Or you can simply be thankful competitions are even taking place and many teams and programs got through entire seasons without incident.

It’s OK to feel somewhere in the middle too. I know I do much of the time.

In areas like ours, the local sports scene is driven by the high school programs. The athletic calendars for most schools north of Hwy 10 are seeing this year’s biggest change right now –– nothingness.

To make room for the alternate fall option that was approved by the WIAA’s Board of Control and offered to member schools last August, the majority of schools who chose to keep fall sports in the fall of 2020 won’t be holding any official practices or competitions until the back end of April. Spring coaches, however, have been allowed more contact days, so things will be gradually ramping up in schools through March and early April.

Most schools that chose the alternate fall option were in the southern part of the state where conditions are more favorable for spring football. There are a few teams in the north playing spring football like Stevens Point, Eau Claire Memorial and North, Superior and most of the big Fox Cities schools.

Actually, this spring might not feel much different than many other springs in the north when the snow took forever to melt and no one got outside until mid- to late April anyway. There just won’t be the indoor track meets and baseball/softball trips to Mauston to bide the time. Then again, early signs from Mother Nature indicate this could be the second straight wasted early spring in this area. I probably shouldn’t open my big mouth yet. It is still early March.

Like all other sports this year, spring seasons will be about three weeks shorter than normal. Because of their late starts, they’ll extend well into June. A state run in baseball or softball will have your team playing as late as June 28-July 1. State track and field championships, however those may look, are planned for June 25-26. Girls soccer and boys tennis will go through that weekend as well if your team makes a state run. Individual state tennis is the previous weekend, along with state golf.

It will be interesting to see how it all meshes with attempts to hold summer leagues and programs, kids’ club sports options, kids’ summer jobs, military commitments for graduating student-athletes and the quick turnaround to fall sports, assuming the WIAA goes back to its normal calendars in the 2021-22 school year. As of now, 11-player football equipment handout and first practice dates are Aug. 2-3. Eight-player football, girls tennis and girls swimming follow with their typical first-practice dates of Tuesday, Aug. 10. Everyone else starts on Monday, Aug. 16 –– at least for now.

Like everything else this school year, you just roll with the punches and make it work the best you can.

Making it work is something a lot of people have put a lot of time, struggle and effort into since August and those people deserve thanks. That starts at the WIAA level and then goes down especially to your local athletic directors and school officials who have had to deal with way more than they normally do just to hold a simple basketball game or volleyball match. Discussions among local ADs, principals and administrators and local health departments allowed for many leagues to hold anywhere from reasonable to fully-completed conference seasons. Kudos to schools that have stayed virtual yet allowed their student-athletes to compete.

For the WIAA to provide the tournament experiences it has so far for most sports is commendable. Last I heard there’s been very little evidence of COVID being spread amongst student-athletes in interscholastic competitions. It’s up to you if you want to put asterisks by all of this year’s state championships because not all of the schools were competing. That’s fair.

Have there been some hiccups and items to question along the way? Sure. I don’t understand all the extra restrictions wrestling was put under if basketball and hockey could proceed with their full schedules. The fall football season didn’t have the same energy with no state tournament and so many teams running into quarantine issues. It’s understandable that there simply wasn’t time to fit in a legitimate football tournament, but the resulting anticlimactic feel to November was inevitable. I still question why the WIAA Board of Control was so adamant that fall sports needed to start so late.

I still question if there couldn’t have been a quick way to somehow finish the last week of last winter’s basketball tournaments. The WIAA had little choice to cancel spring. But the way basketball ended last March still has to bother people.

It was tough to see the news last week that the Madison school district, which you could argue the alternate fall option was made for, delayed the start of high school sports, yet again, to April 4, pretty much killing alternate fall for those kids. They have had nothing for a year ––other than whatever club opportunities folks have been able to organize. The suburban Dane County teams that did compete for half the winter had to do so outside of the county.

A basketball tournament without Milwaukee city schools doesn’t feel right either.

It will be interesting to see what the WIAA and its health advisors come up with for spring COVID guidelines and procedures. Regardless, it will be fun to get back outside and breathe fresh air again –– well, maybe.

Matt Frey is the Sports Editor at The Star News.