LHSAA Says High School Football Practice Can Start August 3rd
The summer has been full of unknowns with the future of 2020 fall high school sports in Louisiana. With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing across the state, many predicted that high school football would be unable to operate in Louisiana.
But LHSAA Executive Director Eddie Bonine has been very confident that fall sports, including football, would have a chance this fall. However when the LHSAA released a listing of their own "Phases" for reopening practice, they created some major confusion.
The gird of LHSAA "Phases" was instantly confused with the "Phases" for reopening the state of Louisiana and Governor John Bel Edwards have put forward for the state. The confusion over this difference led to a lot of news reports that indicated high school football wouldn't be able to start in Louisiana until after the state completed "Phase 3" of the Governor's reopening.
But the 4 "Phases" for the LHSAA do not match with the 3 "Phases" from the Governor. Bonine joined The Tim Fletcher Show earlier this month to help clear that up.
Now another example of the "Phases" not matching came down this week, as Bonine and the LHSAA have cleared the way for high school football practices to start next week across the state. In a letter that the LHSAA had sent out to schools, they indicate that football practices can begin August 3rd, 2020.
The first round of practices will be helmets only, with no contact. This allows teams to work on passing drills, handoffs, footwork, conditioning, and 7 on 7 drills. But no team group will be allowed to exceed 25 people.
The letter says that as of August 6th, players can begin wearing pads during practices. However it appears that these rules will expire when the LHSAA Summer rules expire, so pads may have to come back off by August 9th, but that could be addressed in a future letter from the LHSAA.