@gamecock303 posted:Im in SC and I'm not really in favor of the proposed season switch. A lot of the coaches that I have seen comment on it are from bigger/better programs that likely won't have many problems adapting to it, personally I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum in that I'm not sure what our team would even look like if we were to switch seasons. From my understanding of the proposal we would only get 2 weeks prior to the start of the season to work with our kids which leads me to worry about whether it will be enough to get our kids ready when most of our kids don't play travel ball or anything outside the high school season and probably haven't picked up a ball since things got shut down in March. The single elimination playoff proposal also sucks and while I'm not a huge fan of the proposed shrinking of the number of teams in the playoffs I have long thought that too many teams make the playoffs in every sport here. The reduction in the number of games allowed also bothers me particularly for a sport that has already had one season halted (we were 6 days into the regular season when things go shut down this spring) and now they are cutting the number of allowed games by 40%, I think, for another season.
Another concern of mine is what happens moving forward, IF things go as planned and we play this spring then we face the possibility of going from November of 2020 (possibly earlier for teams that don't make the playoffs) until December/January of 2021 before being able to get our kids on the field.
I have concerns over not only being able to play this fall due to the virus but also due to the weather. I believe the last 3 or 4 years we have lost time during football season due to hurricanes so I worry about what the contingency plan will be for that this year.
My final and biggest concern is what happens if/when we are unable to play this fall. Supposedly the plan is to move back the the "spring 2" season but there are over laps between the seasons which leads me to worry about what happens at small schools where not only do the various sports share athletes but they also share coaches. Our head coach also coaches football so he could potentially be unavailable not only for the first week or so of the season but but also for the 2 weeks that we actually do get to work with the kids before the season starts. The mix up of the seasons also has me worried about what multi sport athletes are going to do, if we played in the fall it wouldn't be much of a concern but playing in the spring would cause a problem for our program in particular as we would be playing right after football season and at the same time as wrestling. We have several guys who play football and I wonder how many would skip baseball and opt to prepare for the following football season. We also have 4 or 5 wrestlers on our team which typically goes deep into the playoffs and 3 I believe who qualified for the individual championships this year (1 who won his weight class and the other 2 placed in the top 4 I believe) and I would be surprised if they chose baseball over wrestling.
If you have most of your guys who are not playing anything after school ball then the playoffs are probably not a concern. That is hard to believe in today's world. Every player on our varsity here in SC plays summer ball on different levels and we are 2A. All you normally get in a regular spring to get ready for ball is 1 week before scrimmages and 3/4 weeks before games so nothing is different. The season would only go from September 1 until the end of October so weather would not be a problem here except it would start warm and end cooler rather than the opposite in the spring.
The biggest hurdle is the big dog coaches are not in support of this. They are the ones whining because they say their pitchers have been throwing all summer which is not true because no one here started playing until mid June. Their biggest complaint is their best players will have to choose between playing school ball and the showcases in the fall and they know that their best players will choose showcase on the weekends over school ball during the week. They are not proposing limiting games by 40%. You can get up to 26 games in regular season and they are proposing 20 games but allowing Saturday DH's to only count as 1 which is like softball so you could get 23/24 according to what they decide.
I have not heard anything in their proposal of a Spring 2 season other than they are proposing the ability to play games in the spring of next year just like they do in the fall with a limit of 80% of returning varsity players. The schools that do this now use a combination of school coaches and parents/outside people. So if your school does not do it now why would they do it in 2021. If they have been doing it, then they will do it the same way. I don't see that changing anything.
The coaches that understand this will get their players ready starting in a few weeks with someone outside their coaching staff running outside practices VOLUNTARILY. The biggest downfall to this happening is that you have to be in school to practice or play. Our school system's plan is to start online and move to face to face or have alternating days where kids go to school. We could not practice until the first day the kids went into the classroom. If a kid chose online school as an option then they would not be eligible for sports is the interpretation I am hearing from school officials. Which does not make sense since homeschool kids can play sports in SC.