The 2021 HS and College Baseball Season

Yes.

Not necessarily. In some parts of the country, college football is being played and baseball teams are working hard every day getting ready for the spring. Unfortunetly, it's not going to go away too soon and some schools have done well with managing and others not.

I am not sure how it works for the programs that will be getting colder weather. 

I can speak for my son's D1 east coast experience so far.  Only freshmen living on campus, upperclassmen who have off-campus housing can be there.  Hybrid learning.  My son has 2 classes in-person and 2 online.  Lift and individual work happening per NCAA guidelines.  So far, it's gone really well.  I believe there has only been one case on campus and 1 off.  They go home at Thanksgiving and stay home to finish the semester.  Hopeful that we can play in the spring.  Many of our competitors are all online, so not sure how or if they are practicing. But, intrasquad starts this week I believe.

There have been some pretty good HS transfers into Palm Beach County from states that apparently aren’t expected to have HS sports this year. I’m sure they are coming into other parts of FL as well. Some counties are going with their normal fall baseball programs and others (Palm Beach) don’t seem to have any organized fall programs

I'm not sure what's going to happen? The whole thing is a mess and it's been a mess since March. Not sure how and when this thing ends? But, I do pray, if it does somehow manage to wipe out the 2021 NCAA baseball season that the NCAA then doesn't go and give the '21 freshmen another year and/or give all the players from 2020 an additional 2nd free year. The logjam they created this year is bad enough. No need to compound it.

@Francis7 posted:

I'm not sure what's going to happen? The whole thing is a mess and it's been a mess since March. Not sure how and when this thing ends? But, I do pray, if it does somehow manage to wipe out the 2021 NCAA baseball season that the NCAA then doesn't go and give the '21 freshmen another year and/or give all the players from 2020 an additional 2nd free year. The logjam they created this year is bad enough. No need to compound it.

There are many conference programs that are into fall practice and plan on baseball in the spring. Same thing for fall sports that have been moved to the spring. 

Maybe just the same type of situation as college football. Not everyone plays. Not sure if plans have yet to be approved by the NCAA.

My college son started official practice on Saturday.   He thought he was worn out before....

my son starts his "fall training" soon.  we have a zoom meeting this week so the parents will get the details.  They have a couple of cohorts of 10 or so kids going for 3 weeks  other than showing your "commitment" to the program, I fail to see what 3 weeks of conditioning, 5 months before tryouts is going to do for the kids.  I heard that they won't be hitting/fielding and that the weights (indoors) won't be used either.  

My kid started school last week. He finished baseball on the last week of August. He pretty much slept, hung out with friends played some basketball, did light workouts (push ups/pull ups/bike) and finished his summer reading.  He just started his creatine load as he wants to gain another 10-15 lbs of muscle why dropping his body fat to 12-13%.  He is talking to Tread to see if they can customize a program for him during the off season. He is now putting more effort to prepare for the SAT/ACT this fall. He will not return to baseball related training until mid November. He made a decision to skip a relatively local D3 camp as it is in October and he felt he would not be ready, kinda silly reason but I agree it should be skipped as there is still time as he is a Junior. There should be opportunities in 2021 for showcasing and camps.   

@Kimb27 posted:

I believe there has only been one case on campus and 1 off.  They go home at Thanksgiving and stay home to finish the semester.  Hopeful that we can play in the spring. 

One case that they know of. I am sure there are many more. It’s irrelevant if you are not hospitalized. I am glad things are going well so far for your boy. 

@Francis7 posted:

I'm not sure what's going to happen? The whole thing is a mess and it's been a mess since March. Not sure how and when this thing ends? But, I do pray, if it does somehow manage to wipe out the 2021 NCAA baseball season that the NCAA then doesn't go and give the '21 freshmen another year and/or give all the players from 2020 an additional 2nd free year. The logjam they created this year is bad enough. No need to compound it.

There will be attrition due to mental strain and lack of playing. It is very difficult to constantly prepare for something that may or may not happen. It happens every year without C-19. Even if another year is granted, how many will be able to $pay?  How many will be able to withstand the agony of not playing for a year and a half?  How many will be out of shape and ripe for injuries?  These are difficult times for everyone. The best advice I can give is to stay physically and mentally prepared. It will be difficult. But those are the guys that will be on the field. 

@RoadRunner posted:

One case that they know of. I am sure there are many more. It’s irrelevant if you are not hospitalized. I am glad things are going well so far for your boy. 

Locally, we are in a second wave (the first was during the summer, as our community really didn't get hit in the first national wave).  It seems to have mostly bypassed the athletes on this second wave, due to most of them getting it this summer.  Football is back to full contact and there doesn't seem to be any issue.  During the summer, they were very cautious, even shutting down workouts.  However, most of the kids ignored the rules when they weren't in the controlled workouts (many would arrive in packed vehicles, hang out afterwards, etc.), and it seemed to spread to most of them.   For us, baseball is pretty much considered a certainty, but we will keep away until football is done to have a break.  Then hit it hard.

We just received our son's high school schedule. This is in the Houston, TX area. 29 game season.  3 preseason scrimmages, 3 4-game round robin tournaments, then a 15 game district/league schedule, 2 additional non district games.  First game is February 25th and district wraps up on April 30th with playoffs to follow.

We are currently at 20 games and trying to get into the mid-twenties. Right now we have two of the top 10 teams in the country on the schedule (depending on your source of course). I think coach and the AD have slightly overestimated how good the team will be. Next year would have been better to schedule those teams. Besides 1 senior starting pitcher, the rest are 2022 and 2023 grads.

Our season is pushed back because the winter sports got pushed back and the don't want to have overlap.

Normally we start and end like 3 weeks earlier.

FL actually decided to let pitchers and catchers start on 1/4. Of course most schools are taking that and having full blown tryouts and practices right now. Son's school won't start anything until 1/18. I'm good with that as it will allow more time to work out and train.

HS in Texas has the normal start date, at least in my area. I have talked to a number of college players that have been working out at my son's teams facility. Some from D1s, D2, D3, JUCOs and NAIAs in TX, OK, LA, NM. All are going back and starting practice as scheduled except for one NAIA that has decided to cancel the season. What happens in the future is anyone's guess.

We are in Texas too.  I think our HS district is actually starting a week early. My son is back at college and started workouts on Monday.

@Francis7 posted:

I'm not sure what's going to happen? The whole thing is a mess and it's been a mess since March. Not sure how and when this thing ends? But, I do pray, if it does somehow manage to wipe out the 2021 NCAA baseball season that the NCAA then doesn't go and give the '21 freshmen another year and/or give all the players from 2020 an additional 2nd free year. The logjam they created this year is bad enough. No need to compound it.

D3 has already said that the 2021 year will not count against eligibility...even if they end up playing!  So my son who is a Sophomore and played as a freshman still has 4 years of eligibility...even if he plays this season!!  Crazy.  

The CCAA (D2) has already cancelled the season out here in CA.  I suppose they could reverse that but I doubt it.  

My sons D3 league is trying to push the start date back to after Spring Break and play into Summer.  School wants to house all athletes in one Dorm.  I'm hopeful....but its doubtful they will play.  They're also trying to get NCAA to pay for the dorm costs in the summer.  Good luck with that.

USC(Southern California) is in the weight room and running sprints right now from what I’ve seen on social media. CIF-SS HS teams aren’t allowed to be practicing down here in Southern California.

VHSL (Virginia) has spring sports (baseball, softball, etc) scheduled to start in April.  Winter sports are supposedly in process and should wrap up by mid-February (if I read the website correctly).   Fall sports (football, etc) start practice in early February with an abbreviated schedule (6 games max instead of 10).  I believe all sports have an abbreviated schedule (like only 2/3 of a normal regular season).   All subject to change.

@baseballhs posted:

We are in Texas too.  I think our HS district is actually starting a week early. My son is back at college and started workouts on Monday.

Yea, if you are part of UIL, they moved all the dates up a week. I am wondering if it is to build a cushion into the schedules to allow for making up any postponed games due to COVID or if there are delays getting into playoffs.

@2025prospect posted:

USC(Southern California) is in the weight room and running sprints right now from what I’ve seen on social media. CIF-SS HS teams aren’t allowed to be practicing down here in Southern California.

Perfect Game has several MLK weekend tournaments going on in the south. My son's showcase team is playing in the one in Houston. Half of the teams in the tournament are from California.

My son was allowed to practice in December for three weeks.  I do not remember that every being a case.  Now, things are back into non-practice mode for the first three weeks, but the kids are getting their arms in shape by throwing, along with strength and conditioning (which are year round).  Looking forward to a good season for our kids, as the senior class if pretty deep this year.

here in the bay area, things aren't going well.  case rates, open icu beds, weekly case numbers...you name the metric and we're looking bad.  

sports are up in the air right now.  we have a tiered system in CA and we're at the lowest (worst) tier.  for baseball to go, we have to be in the next tier, so there's a chance.  basketball, football, wrestling, and other close contact and/or indoor sports look like they're dead in the water.

from a personal standpoint, though, it wouldn't be all bad if baseball is cancelled (tongue firmly in cheek).  my son's team plays in the highest of three divisions for public schools here but the last place team each year is in danger of being dropped down to the next lower division.  my son's team returns only 7 players and they only have 5 seniors (my son and a backup catcher who was brought up bc the sr backup didn't make grades last year are the two underclassmen returning to varsity). the rest of the jr class is solid but no studs.  my son's soph class is deeper and a couple of potential dudes and the incoming freshman class looks pretty good, as well.    from a very selfish standpoint, skip the year and preserve the spot in the top division!!

So far, GA is on schedule. Team starts voluntary conditioning today, with quite a few COVID precautions in place (GHSA set a bunch of guidelines on the 4th). All seniors are doing digital learning in an attempt to bubble themselves in the face of COVID. Fingers crossed we can pull off the season safely.

In Hawaii all fall and winter sports cancelled.  Spring sports moved back to Mid march.

One son's D3 (Centennial league) has cancelled all its sports this year. Not sure about how other schools are handling it.

Other son's D3 (NESCAC) is waiting as long as it possibly can before pulling the plug but it's not looking like any sports are going to happen, frankly, in 20-21. I'm afraid the elephant in the room is now the center of attention.

Make sure to keep yourself in shape. A home gym is great of course but if that is not available and public and school gym is closed at least do body weight training (maybe find creative ways to make excercise harder like push ups with a back pack).

Also keep the arm in shape by throwing into a net or something and do some tee work.

But most important is to stay in shape and do your throwing because if you don't do that an injury is almost guaranteed when you go from 0 to 100 when the season starts.

D3s and JUCOs in Texas reported this week. Only the athletes are on campus, everyone else is virtual.

GT reported this week or might be next.

TX HS baseball starts 1/21, so they say. We just finished Football with the guys inches from each other and breathing and spitting on each other, in close contact, for the last few months with minimal issues and outbreaks. Very few restrictions on football, as always.

Now UIL wants to limit other sports to 2 people per player, which is absolutely asinine. I get it maybe for basketball in an enclosed Gym or whatever, but for an outdoor sport like baseball and fans in the stands, with 1/20th of the fans in those stands, is absolutely ridiculous and shows Texas really only cares about football.

@ARCEKU21 posted:

Perfect Game has several MLK weekend tournaments going on in the south. My son's showcase team is playing in the one in Houston. Half of the teams in the tournament are from California.

We will be there too.  2022 son is not ramped up for competition so won’t be pitching but going to be in the dugout to get to know the guys some before summer.  Schedules posted today, btw.

@Eokerholm posted:

D3s and JUCOs in Texas reported this week. Only the athletes are on campus, everyone else is virtual.

GT reported this week or might be next.

TX HS baseball starts 1/21, so they say. We just finished Football with the guys inches from each other and breathing and spitting on each other, in close contact, for the last few months with minimal issues and outbreaks. Very few restrictions on football, as always.

Now UIL wants to limit other sports to 2 people per player, which is absolutely asinine. I get it maybe for basketball in an enclosed Gym or whatever, but for an outdoor sport like baseball and fans in the stands, with 1/20th of the fans in those stands, is absolutely ridiculous and shows Texas really only cares about football.

Yea, I have a bad feeling things are going to get ugly in some areas of Texas. Houston ISD just canceled all Freshman and JV sports. Varsity sports are allowed to have 5 tickets per player. Hopefully other school districts don't follow. All they are going to do is push kids to start playing select/travel early. They are not going to stop the kids from playing. And wouldn't it be better to keep the same group of kids from the same school together rather than them go and play on teams with kids from other schools right now?  Fingers crossed this doesn't get messy.

I coach in SC as far as I know everything is on track to start practice on Feb. 1, but I am holding my breathe.  Football here in SC got the majority of their offseason although many districts around the state did shut down their workouts for various time periods (I think the district I work in was one of the only larger districts that never shut down workouts), winter sports to my knowledge got their normal off season time but the HSL announced in like November that spring sports could not hold any organized offseason workouts (we normally get 20 in the months of December and January) so I imagine that they will likely be quick to shut things down again. 

Baseball in our area is really struggling, we are in a rather low income area (we have such a high percentage of kids on free and reduced lunch in our schools that due to some federal program all of the kids in our area get school lunch free due to some federal program) so travel ball is out of the question for the majority of the kids in the area.  We only have one youth league that is on its 3rd director in the last 5 or so years and from what I have seen a lot of the people involved don't necessarily have a ton of baseball knowledge other than the basics).  At the high school level our JV team hasn't won a game in 3 years (some of this may be because our JV teams tend to be heavy on 7th 8th and some very raw 9th graders).  Overall the high school program is in rough shape (one of the reasons that I decided to get involved) and we a lot of times end up with kids transferring to different schools for their junior and senior years.

I really worry about the future of baseball in the area given all of the factors.  The kids in our youth league didn't even get a chance to play a game last year, had only recently started to practice when things were shut down and the park has been shut down ever since.

@gamecock303 is there anything we can do to help (donations of equipment or gear, etc.)?

I do not expect to hear any updates on baseball for my kid's HS for a couple of month. They typically start baseball a couple of weeks before the season as they do not want to interfere with winter sports. Even with winter sports cancelled there is nada. My kid recently injured his elbow again and is shutdown for several weeks and is awaiting further imaging on the bone. He did inform the schools he has been in contact with and they are supportive but who knows. He is bummed out given the work put in, but the lemonade here it is a good test of his resilience and will filter out the schools truly interested in him. 

we had a zoom meeting with the athletic department last night with some encouraging/discouraging (depends how you view it, I guess) updates.  right now, California (CIF...our overriding HS sports org) has the sports split into 2 seasons:  winter and spring. further, the go/no go decision for each sport is dependent on CDC guidelines and the conditions of the sport. outdoor high contact sports like football and LAX are in the orange group (second to least restrictive).  indoor high contact sports (or high spit content, I guess) sports like hoop, wrestling and competitive cheer are in the yellow or least restrictive tier.  baseball is in the red or second to most restrictive.  sports like swimming and cross country (outdoors, little to no contact) are in purple or the most restrictive.

sports can go if the county is in the assigned tier or better during the season. for baseball, that means we have to be in red during the spring season (april to june). we were told that conditioning (not sports related) can start for spring sports in February and practices in mid March.  Games start in april.  here's the confusing (as if all of the previous wasn't confusing enough) part: if the county isn't our tier or better, teams can practice but not play games, so it looks like it will be week to week, even if we get the season to start at all.  

to add a cherry on top, you'd think that the purple tier winter sports could get going now since there's no worse tier but most of California is under a stay at home order due to a low percentage of ICU beds available (I think I last read there's about 3% ICU capacity in my county...San Bernardino and Los Angeles are at 0%). Only Sacramento and a couple of counties in Northern California are above the 15% threshold that would lift the stay at home order. because of this, purple tier sports can't play yet.

it sucks, but I get it. the ICU capacity thing is the really scary part for me, as a parent who's made his share of trips to the ER for sports injuries.  nothing serious yet, thankfully, but the possibility is always there and, I imagine, the highly impacted ICU situation would have a trickle down effect to other hospital services.

now, all we can do is stay safe and healthy and hope that the other idiots in our state start to do the same so we can bring our numbers down.  

My son's HS has been on the field everyday during baseball class period since school started.  They just released the schedule and its a full season regular schedule.  After-school practices start Jan 22 and first scrimmage on Feb 6.

This is in Texas by the way. But clearly not in Houston.  We are in the Dallas area.

@mattys posted:

we had a zoom meeting with the athletic department last night with some encouraging/discouraging (depends how you view it, I guess) updates.  right now, California (CIF...our overriding HS sports org) has the sports split into 2 seasons:  winter and spring. further, the go/no go decision for each sport is dependent on CDC guidelines and the conditions of the sport. outdoor high contact sports like football and LAX are in the orange group (second to least restrictive).  indoor high contact sports (or high spit content, I guess) sports like hoop, wrestling and competitive cheer are in the yellow or least restrictive tier.  baseball is in the red or second to most restrictive.  sports like swimming and cross country (outdoors, little to no contact) are in purple or the most restrictive.

sports can go if the county is in the assigned tier or better during the season. for baseball, that means we have to be in red during the spring season (april to june). we were told that conditioning (not sports related) can start for spring sports in February and practices in mid March.  Games start in april.  here's the confusing (as if all of the previous wasn't confusing enough) part: if the county isn't our tier or better, teams can practice but not play games, so it looks like it will be week to week, even if we get the season to start at all.  

to add a cherry on top, you'd think that the purple tier winter sports could get going now since there's no worse tier but most of California is under a stay at home order due to a low percentage of ICU beds available (I think I last read there's about 3% ICU capacity in my county...San Bernardino and Los Angeles are at 0%). Only Sacramento and a couple of counties in Northern California are above the 15% threshold that would lift the stay at home order. because of this, purple tier sports can't play yet.

it sucks, but I get it. the ICU capacity thing is the really scary part for me, as a parent who's made his share of trips to the ER for sports injuries.  nothing serious yet, thankfully, but the possibility is always there and, I imagine, the highly impacted ICU situation would have a trickle down effect to other hospital services.

now, all we can do is stay safe and healthy and hope that the other idiots in our state start to do the same so we can bring our numbers down.  

Eek, the Newsom color tier. Your post sounds like reading the articles about Disneyland being able to open. What will be tough to get going is that it seems like Newsome lumps everything into these tier requirements instead of handling businesses, activities, sports, etc on their own individual type scales.  I have talked to some friends back home (originally from NorCal) and they are not holding out much hope for a high school season based on the requirements of these tiers.  The desire to play somewhere is evident of the 27 teams coming from Cali this weekend for the PG tournament in the Houston area.

@2022NYC posted:

I do not expect to hear any updates on baseball for my kid's HS for a couple of month. They typically start baseball a couple of weeks before the season as they do not want to interfere with winter sports. Even with winter sports cancelled there is nada. My kid recently injured his elbow again and is shutdown for several weeks and is awaiting further imaging on the bone. He did inform the schools he has been in contact with and they are supportive but who knows. He is bummed out given the work put in, but the lemonade here it is a good test of his resilience and will filter out the schools truly interested in him.

What a bummer. Your son is a pitcher, correct?  Will he miss part of the HS season if it goes as planned?