California becomes 10th state to cancel spring high school sports due to COVID-19

Without school in session because of coronavirus pandemic, CIF is forced to forgo 2020 spring sports season.

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After a wait-and-see approach, the California Interscholastic Federation has, unfortunately, seen enough.

The state's high school sports governing body on Friday called off its championship events for the spring season during a conference call with executive director Ron Nocetti and its 10 section commissioners.

A statement read "the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) does not see an avenue for the spring sports season to continue."

Following the lead of California state school Superintendent Tony Thurmond's announcement that schools will not re-open this academic year, but instead use distance education, the CIF was forced to close the books on a spring season that barely got started due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"We understand this is disappointing for everyone involved in education-based athletics and empathize with our student-athletes and all who are impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak," Nocetti wrote. "As always, our top priority is everyone's ongoing health and safety during this challenging time, and we all look forward to the day when education-based athletics resumes."

As of Friday afternoon, California became the 10th state in the country to cancel its spring season. Earlier in the day, Michigan made the same announcement.

The others are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Virginia.

For the first time in the history of the tournament, the CIF had to cancel the 40th annual basketball championships a day before they were to start on March 13 due to COVID-19. The following week, the organization postponed its spring sports to take a wait-and-see approach until Friday's meeting.