Rebuilding America: Cautiously and slowly, high school and college sports are returning to Iowa

Cody Goodwin
Des Moines Register

The novel coronavirus pandemic put the athletics world on pause in mid-March, halting what was supposed to be an exciting stretch of sports.

Some events were canceled, including the NCAA Wrestling Championships, conference basketball tournaments and entire spring sports seasons. Some bigger events were simply pushed back or postponed, like the Masters and the Olympic Games.

But after a two-month hiatus, sports are slowly creeping back into our lives.

South Korea’s professional baseball organization and Germany’s famous Bundesliga took the lead. Here in the United States, NASCAR and UFC are back while other professional leagues — MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, others — grapple with how to reopen.

Two people play catch on the baseball field during the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic, Wednesday, May 20, 2020, at West High School in Iowa City, Iowa.

In Iowa, the first sports back will be at the high school level.

Yes, the state’s unique tradition of hosting baseball and softball in the summer has led it to become the country’s first to restart high school sports. Gov. Kim Reynolds green-lit their return at a May 20 news conference.

Practices can start on June 1. Games can follow on June 15.

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“High school athletics was the logical place to start the process of bringing athletics back in season,” Reynolds said then. “We’re working closely with the Iowa High School Athletic Association and others to make this possible.”

Prep sports in Iowa have been on hold since March 13, when the boys’ state basketball tournament concluded. Even then, the IHSAA worked with public health officials: After allowing normal attendance that entire week, the final day was held with limited spectators — just 100 fans per team, most of which were family members.

The IHSAA, along with the Iowa Girls’ High School Athletic Union, will take similar precautions when finalizing provisions for summer sports.

The Iowa Department of Education announced “Reopening Guidance” the same day as Reynolds’ announcement. It includes a checklist that athletic directors, coaches, athletes and fans — yes, fans will be allowed at games — must follow to ensure safety during practices and games.

Among them: consistent health checks, maintaining social distancing, using personal equipment whenever possible, sanitizing shared equipment when necessary, and more.

“The guidelines laid out by the Department of Education and the Department of Public Health will enable us to safely move forward with a softball season this summer,” IGHSAU executive director Jean Berger said in a statement.

“We are grateful for their leadership and support. We know the games will have different circumstances and that we will all have to work together to keep everyone safe, but we are confident that we are up to this challenge.”

The association and union plan to meet with their corresponding coaching associations to hash out contingency plans. Currently, both plan to host shortened seasons and conduct postseasons complete with state tournaments — for softball, that’s at Harlan Rogers Park in Fort Dodge; for baseball, Principal Park in Des Moines.

The rest of the country, meanwhile, will be watching.

“It might be on ESPN that Iowa is able to play high school baseball (and softball),” Urbandale baseball coach Jeremy Heinen said. “We could be a state that guides others to do it and do it safely.”

Members of the Urbandale baseball team celebrate a 8-2 win over Johnston in the Iowa Class 4A state baseball championship game on Saturday, Aug. 3, 2019, at Principal Park in Des Moines.

In many ways, the high school baseball and softball seasons will be something of an experiment for what’s coming this fall.

The fall sports season is huge for Iowa, a state without major professional sports. That means high school football, volleyball, cross country, boys large-class golf and girls large-class swimming.

That also means college football.

The same day Reynolds OK'd the return of summer sports, the NCAA announced that Division I football and basketball teams could host voluntary activities beginning June 1, “so long as local, state, and federal regulations are followed,” marking the first step toward a 2020 college football season.

How that season will look and operate, though, remains to be seen.

Iowa State Athletic Director Jamie Pollard, photographed at a Sept. 18, 2018, news conference in Ames, expects the Cyclones to open against South Dakota as scheduled on Sept. 5.

Jamie Pollard, Iowa State’s athletic director, believes the season will start on time. The Cyclones open against South Dakota on Sept. 5 at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, while the Hawkeyes play Northern Iowa the same day at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City.

But Pollard is planning on limited fan participation, at least to start.

“If it was right now, we’re at about a 50% capacity,” he said during the Virtual Cyclones Tailgate tour earlier this month, referencing the restaurant guidelines outlined by Reynolds. “We’ll be communicating that over the next few weeks.

“We’re going to have to define that better for our fans, especially if there are only going to be 30,000 fans (in the stands).”

Many of the major sports that have resumed have done so without fans. That includes the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series that ran at Knoxville Raceway in Iowa earlier this month.

Football, of course, drives the financial bus for college sports. Patrick Rishe, the sports business program director at Washington University in St. Louis, told ESPN that an estimated $4 billion could be lost without a college football season.

“If we can’t get football up and running,” Pollard continued, “we’re going to be in a world of (financial) hurt.”

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby suggested that college football players could be subject to coronavirus testing “probably every two to three days” in order to safely bring college football back. From there, contingency plans must be in place to deal with any number of possible scenarios.

“There will be positive tests, and you need to do scenario planning to be ready to act on short notice and we need to be in the process of exploration about how we go about coexisting with this virus,” Bowlsby told USA Today Sports.

“There are things that are arduous and will take time and will be absolutely essential to the ongoing mitigation of the risks.”

The north end zone at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City.

Neither Iowa State nor Iowa has released plans on when athletes might return to campus. Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz told the Dan Patrick Show in early May that most Big Ten coaches agree that at least six weeks of preparation is necessary before a season kicks off.

From there, safety — and perhaps the virus itself — will dictate what happens next.

“If you slide the schedule back three or four weeks, that may be doable, but you’d have finals in December to contend with,” Ferentz told Patrick. “My guess is we’d probably go without fans. That’s just one person’s opinion.”

Cody Goodwin covers wrestling and high school sports for the Des Moines Register. Follow him on Twitter at @codygoodwin.

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Dates to know as sports return to Iowa

  • June 1: NCAA to allow football, men's and women's basketball athletes to return to campus for voluntary workouts; first day of practice for high school baseball and softball
  • June 15: First competition date for high school baseball and softball
  • July 27-31: State softball tournament in Fort Dodge
  • July 24-Aug. 1: State baseball tournament in Des Moines
  • Aug. 10: First day of practice for high school fall sports
  • Sept. 5: First scheduled football games for Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa