This year sports at Mamaroneck High School are going to look a little different. With lots of uncertainty, the district and section have made decisions on how Mamaroneck will be participating in athletics this year. Originally, the district was following a similar schedule to many other schools with sports not beginning until January. Winter sports would be condensed and take place between January 4 and March 13. Fall sports would then take place in Season II which would be from March 1 to May 8. Lastly, spring sports would be from April 5 to June 12. Some sports such as girls tennis, wrestling, and competitive cheer were moved out of their season and pushed one or two seasons later for safety and weather-related reasons. 

Recently, however, there have been changes. Governor Cuomo approved girls tennis, boys soccer, girls soccer, field hockey, and boys and girls cross country to begin practices and games/meets/matches beginning on September 29. A few of the fall sports were not given permission from Governor Cuomo such as volleyball, football, and cheer. These three sports will still be moved to Season II beginning on March 1, 2021. 

The school is working hard to make sure these sports will be as safe as possible for all athletes and their families. Some teams like tennis will not have issues social distancing, but others like soccer and field hockey are a bit more of a challenge. Bari Suman, the athletic director at MHS, has worked countless hours creating restrictions for the sports teams that were safe enough for the Department of Health to approve. For the teams that will have a more difficult time social distancing, Ms. Suman said “Everything is going to be done in the light of safety while hopefully allowing people to feel like they’re back to normal.” 

The current plan is to have the field hockey and soccer teams practice in smaller groups and keep these groups as similar as possible from day to day. Before practice students will have had to fill out a health form and get their temperature checked, similar to school. Additionally, there will be one team per field this year rather than doubling up, which was how many teams practiced in previous years. This means practices might not be right after school, and some teams will come back later in the afternoon to begin practice. 

Teams will also not be traveling as far as they did in past years, only competing within the section twice. This means that there will be far fewer games than there have been in the past (close to eight).

If the school ends up going fully virtual there is still a chance sports will continue to play. The decision as to whether sports continue or not is up to the section, not the school itself, so if the section continues to play, the school may continue practices and games.

Suman said she and the school are still trying to figure out if spectators will be allowed but, making sports feel as normal as possible and keeping people safe and healthy are her number one priorities.