The Northern Section is pressing forward with fall sports, bucking the move by the state CIF to move its calendar back to 2021.
"We're not taking sports off the table," Northern Section commissioner Liz Kyle said of an Executive Committee decision to play a traditional sports calendar.
The state on Monday announced it was moving the fall, winter and spring sports calendars back to two season — fall and spring — to begin in early 2021.
Moments after the CIF announcement, the Northern Section released its own plan to play fall sports, including football, as close to the regular calendar as possible.
"CIF-NS member school teams will begin league play when the member school districts' County Health officers approve the implementation of youth sports, including high school athletics," a section press release read. "This decision could result in teams in one county playing teams outside their league in another county."
Once a plan is approved by the county Health Department, the individual districts are then able to start forming leagues.
Kyle, the section commissioner, said "Some sports will get to start and others will have to wait" depending on their county's COVID-19 numbers. "It's not an all or nothing thing. There may be some leeway in the middle."
Kyle said the section, the largest in terms of geographic size, has perhaps the most two- or three-sport athletes, as well as two-sport coaches given the number of small schools. There are 73 schools in the section, which stretches from the Oregon border to Sutter County and from the Nevada state line to Trinity County.
The move means Northern Section teams would not be eligible for state playoffs.
Sutter won last year's Northern Section Division III title.
File photo by Todd Shurtleff
