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State decision likely ends prep sports season

MARK NELKE | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 5 years, 8 months AGO
by MARK NELKE
Mark Nelke covers high school and North Idaho College sports, University of Idaho football and other local/regional sports as a writer, photographer, paginator and editor at the Coeur d’Alene Press. He has been at The Press since 1998 and sports editor since 2002. Before that, Mark was the one-man sports staff for 16 years at the Bonner County Daily Bee in Sandpoint. Earlier, he was sports editor for student newspapers at Spokane Falls Community College and Eastern Washington University. Mark enjoys the NCAA men's basketball tournament and wiener dogs — and not necessarily in that order. | April 7, 2020 1:09 AM

The spring high school sports season in Idaho is likely over, after it barely began.

The Idaho State Board of Education voted Monday at a special board meeting in Boise to extend its “soft closure” of schools statewide to the end of the 2019-20 school year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

That likely means the end of the spring high school sports season in Idaho, and the Idaho High School Activities Association, which last week suspended all games and practices through April 20, has said it will likely follow what the state board of education does.

The IHSAA has a regularly scheduled board of directors meeting on Wednesday.

On March 16, the IHSAA originally suspended spring sports activities, effective March 17, through April 5. Only a handful of events involving North Idaho teams had been played prior to the original suspension.

The Idaho State Board of Education recently recommended a “soft closure” of schools through April 20, and the IHSAA extended its suspension to that date.

State tournaments in all spring sports are scheduled the week of May 11-16. IHSAA executive director Ty Jones said last week the board would consider extending the spring sports season past then, if that’s what the schools wanted.

However, that was before the state board of education extended its soft closure through the end of the school year. The decision leaves the option for local school districts to open before the end of the school year, if “local and state social distancing orders have been lifted and re-entry criteria established by the Board have been met,” the board said.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee on Monday announced the closure of Washington schools through the end of the school year, and the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association followed by issuing a statement late Monday pulling the plug on the spring high school sports season in that state. Spring sports games and practices were recently postponed through May 4.

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