PIAA approves amendment that will add a week to basketball, most other sports seasons

Fighting through a COVID-dominated year of high school sports was difficult for all involved, but some good could come out of it in the long run.

How about a longer regular season for basketball to start with?

The PIAA Board of Directors took a step in that direction Wednesday afternoon, approving an amendment that will reduce preseason practices for most sports from 15 days to 10 days.

The move won’t affect football, which will still require 15 practice dates prior to playing a game, but it will allow sports such as basketball, baseball, soccer, softball, wrestling and others an added week of playing dates each season, beginning with the 2022-23 school year.

“We surveyed other states and found that a lot of them were only having 10 days of practice in sports other than football,” said PIAA executive director Dr. Robert Lombardi.

Last year, when winter sports seasons were paused in mid-December for nearly a month by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf as a COVID mitigation effort, the PIAA mandated that teams needed 10 days of practice to return to competition once the pause was lifted.

By all accounts that was plenty of time to get prepared.

Lombardi said most sports are now year-round endeavors and players come into preseason practice in better shape. Three weeks of practice is not needed.

Football will still require 15 days of preseason, with the first five dedicated to heat acclimatization.

Golf requires only three days of practice and tennis one week; those won’t change.

Lombardi believes the extra week will help ease scheduling concerns, especially during the winter season.

“We were continually hearing from schools who said that with three weeks of preseason and two scrimmages, if we have any weather-related cancellations we end up playing three and four games per week,” Lombardi said. “They were looking for some help.”

Lombardi feels that adding the extra week at the front of the schedule, rather than pushing the district deadlines back a week makes more sense.

“All that (would do) is shorten the district competitions and may negatively impact district playoffs,” he said. “Further, if you move the district deadline and playoffs back it will impact our state playoffs and our dates are anchored and we have contractual obligations in terms of sites.”

The measure passed 27-2.