Race To The Start––"A Frenzy"
Administrators, coaches, players get ready for a basketball season unlike any other
(Photo Credit: Shutterstock)
In the days immediately after the Illinois High School Association approved a lopped off basketball season Jan. 27, athletic directors and coaches rolled up their sleeves and went to work.
After months of planning and Zoom calls, conversations punctuated by public health restrictions that made scheduling models nothing more than hopeful strategies, administrators now can exercise the skill set required of the job—scheduling games.
But the long-awaited permission to play, while invigorating for all involved, comes with potential trapdoors. There are state-mandated Covid mitigations and protocols that must be adhered to. And the still-looming uncertainty of the virus itself, of how a positive test could force immediate pauses on sports activities.
In the age of Covid, nothing is certain. Everything changes.
The Kerr Report publisher Jon J. Kerr interviewed Chicagoland athletic directors, coaches and players this week about the race to the start of basketball season and embracing the tenuous nature of it all.
Late in the afternoon on Jan. 27, the IHSA published the sports calendar for the rest of the 2020-21 school year.
For basketball, under the category “Practices Start”, it read “ASAP”.
That as soon as possible directive made sense after seeing the sport’s end date of March 13.
That left a month and a half to squeeze in an entire season.
“We knew it would be a shortened schedule,” Glenbrook South Athletic Director Andy Turner said. “In theory, you could play 31 games, the IHSA is not holding us back from that but in reality, that’s not possible.”
With so little time and strict public health guidelines, even a season half that size presents challenges to athletic officials.
Classified as a ‘higher-risk’ sport by the Illinois Department of Public Health, schools are only allowed to play ‘intra-conference’ games and games within a Covid region. And any competition is predicated on the Covid region rolling back to Phase 4.
Another point of concern for administrators—having enough officials to referee games, especially at the lower levels. A frequent question in Zoom meetings was even if schools schedule a game, are there assurances it can be staffed with enough officials?
In the hours and days after Jan. 27, one directive stayed top of mind amongst athletic director’s in both the Central Suburban League and North Suburban Conferences—take care of our own first.
“Most conferences across the state have been in agreement with that, to take care of our conference, and put together a logistical schedule that will allow our athletes to play as many opportunities to play as possible,” Turner said.
Those opportunities will not include a postseason. The March 13 end date given by the IHSA is just that—a hard out with no possibility of a postseason or state series.
The 12-team CSL, divided evenly into North and South Divisions, decided the best format would be a 16-game conference schedule. Six divisional cross over games with the remaining 10 games being home and away intra-divisional games.
This Saturday, Feb. 6, the first divisional cross over games are played. Next Friday and Saturday, Feb. 12 and 13, kicks off the divisional season, with doubleheaders each day featuring boys and girls teams.
The North Suburban Conference, encompassing eight teams, released its schedule Tuesday. It is trying a different approach—a single round schedule (each team plays the other once), concluding with a ‘conference tournament’ to be played over the course of three days.
“We want make that tournament kind of a fun tournament, call it "‘NSC March Madness’ which is what I want to do,” Warren Athletic Director Becky Belmont said. “It took a little planning and talked about it with our coaches and here we are.”
Girls games start on Tuesday, Feb. 9; boys Feb. 10. The construct: girls play on Tues/Fri; boys Wed/Sat for first half of season, then flip days second half.
At the forefront of all conversations—how to hold as many games without unwanted exposure to Covid. The NSC decided a one round format was the best approach, while leaving open dates for non-conference match ups.
(Today, Feb. 3, Region 10 is expected to roll back to Phase 4, allowing for competitive play. While all of this planning went on, both Regions 9 and 10 were still in Tier 1, a level that does not allow for competitive games under current public health guidelines)
“We don’t want to pile three or four games a week for five weeks,” Belmont said. “At first we were like, ‘let’s get in as many games as we can.’ Then we took a step back and were like, ‘is that really the smartest and safest thing to do?’ We want them to play as many games as they can but as the leaders of our programs, is it the safest thing to do?”
And while 16 games may seem rushed over a five-week time frame, some schools, such as Maine South, believe there is room for more competition.
Hawks boys basketball coach Tony Lavorato, Jr. is the son of a coach.
His father, Tony, Sr., coached at Hinsdale South in Darien, IL and at downstate Princeton High School. Tony Lavorato, Jr. has been around the game his whole life. But nothing in his past has prepared him for the last 11 months and the next six weeks.
“It’s kind of like when you drink a monster energy drink and your heart rate starts racing? It’s a season on steroids times two or three,” Lavorato said, in his 17th season as Maine South coach. “It’s not just about coaching, it’s the organization, do we have 50 people in or not? Everybody is working overtime to make this happen. It’s exciting but it’s a grind.”
(Photo Credit: Chicago Tribune)
Maine South has a veteran team coming back and Lavorato wants this group to play as many games as possible in the six week window he has.
So outside of the 16-game CSL schedule, he and Maine South Athletic Director Matt Ryder have added on five more games (that include highly-ranked Notre Dame, Mid-Suburban League’s Hersey as well as Loyola Academy) with hopes of one more.
New guidelines approved by the Illinois Department of Public Health this week allow for more regional flexibility to schedule games. Teams can travel for games outside their Covid region as far as 30 miles.
Lavorato wants to get to 22 games (a normal year would see 30-plus). Three CSL games per week with a fourth one being a ‘challenge’ type game.
“The line I used with my guys was we’ll play anyone, anywhere, at any time. We want to play a Loyola, so we will play them. Notre Dame? We will play them. These are teams that couldn’t play us (before),” Lavorato said.
There’s another reason why he wants to stack the calendar until March 13.
He doesn’t expect to play all of them. Lavorato’s goal?
Get 16 games in.
“Thing are going to happen. If at the end of March 13 and if we’ve played 16 I’m unbelievably excited. 17? Even better. All of them, honestly, it would be a miracle,” he said. “Covid is going to effect the schedule. It has in every state that has been playing. By setting us up where we have different avenues to play, it takes away that scheduling on the fly mentality.”
Lavorato wants to present as organized a season as possible to his players and parents, knowing in an instant, things can change. One Covid outbreak could derail not just one team’s season, but that of others.
Starting and pausing is OK. Completely shutting down is not, not when the wait was so excruciatingly long.
“We thought we were dead. We thought we’d have the season cancelled,” Lavorato said. “Then they opened up a window and we’re going to make the most of whatever we have. We have our school and community buzzing a bit. It’s all a positive thing.”
Throughout Chicagoland, Jeff Schwarz holds a rare job title.
Basketball Coordinator of Officials.
“There’s probably about 17 people that do my job in the Chicago area,” Schwarz said.
Schwarz coordinates officials for both boys and girls in the Central Suburban League and Metro Suburban and for girls teams in the North Suburban Conference.
Technology allows Schwarz to keep up with the demands of scheduling hundreds of games per year. He uses the ArbiterSports software system to assign registered officials once games are uploaded into the system.
By the evening of Jan. 28, games were being loaded into the software and Schwarz could barely keep up.
“A feeding frenzy would be an accurate term,” Schwarz said. “Everybody just grabbing people that were open.”
Making the ‘feeding frenzy’ for officials that much more rabid…the shortage of them.
Schwarz said he first thought the number of referees for the 2020-21 season would be down 25-to-33 percent. He now estimates it’s much more than that, closer to 40 percent.
“The shortage is real,” Schwarz said.
Schwarz describes three phases the led to urgent shortage of referees.
The first happened during the re-enrollment phase, when referees have to re-enroll with the IHSA. This occurs July 1 of every year.
“We were in the throws of Covid then and we had a number of people who didn’t even sign up or re-register. They just went inactive,” Schwarz said.
The next shortage phase occurred a few weeks ago after Gov. Pritzker loosened public health restrictions around sports.
With a basketball season more likely to get played, an email went out to registered officials re-confirming commitments.
That resulted in another round of referees opting out.
“They just said they couldn’t risk it,” Schwarz said. “They said, ‘take me off all the games this year I’m not coming back.’”
The last wave of opt outs happened once conferences began to release schedules.
Over the past few days, Schwarz has directly fielded calls from officials apologizing but saying they just couldn’t do it.
“They are telling me ‘my family is putting too much pressure on me. I can’t do it,’” Schwarz said. “I’ve got a half dozen people or so giving back 40 games.”
So with a 40 percent reduction in the work force, assignors like Schwarz have to adopt a common mantra in the Age of the Virus.
FIGURE IT OUT.
On a Saturday during a typical basketball season, there are often seven officials. Two referees call the freshman A and B games, two work the sophomore game, three the varsity.
“We can cut that down to five by having the varsity guys work the (sophomore) game,” Schwarz said.
He said he is confident the varsity games will be fully covered, with three officials per game.
It’s the lower level games, that would normally have two officials, may now only have one, Schwarz said. Bottom line, working officials will be asked to referee more games.
While the number of officials at the varsity level may look the same, the game experience of those blowing the whistles will likely be effected.
Expect more groups of officials to be working varsity games for the first time this winter, Schwarz said.
“It takes time to transition from an underclass schedule to a varsity schedule,” Schwarz said. “You have guys that have 25 percent of games were varsity games and 75 percent underclass, that may move to 50 percent.
“But that creates a domino effect as there’s fewer guys doing sophomore games as they are now doing varsity and guys doing freshman games are doing sophomore.”
In recent history, no classes of high school kids been asked to change behavior patterns more than the current group of freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors.
Thousands of high school students in Illinois have barely seen the inside of a classroom since March of 2020. Participating in school-sponsored sports, a traditional past time that connects teenagers with their communities, has been deemed unsafe for almost a year.
Given consent to return to the court, athletes are thrilled for the chance to play for their school and with teammates.
“We are thankful to have a season and happy to get together and play as many games as we can,” said Glenbrook South senior guard Cooper Noard.
(Photo Credit: Northbrook Tower)
Noard said the mask-wearing mandate is not top of mind amongst players. He admits it will be strange at first playing in empty gyms (the IHSA grants a 50 spectator limit to start the season) but it’s better than playing no games at all.
“It will be weird. I haven’t played a real game in an empty gym,” Noard said. “But we’ll be ready to go.”
Mundelein senior guard Jack Bikus said not having a state tournament is disappointing. But the NSC’s ‘conference tournament’ concept is a nice consolation prize.
“I’m just happy to have a schedule out. The tournament at the end will be a fun substitute to try and make up for (not have a postseason),” Bikus said. “You can tell guys are locked into practices because we know we don’t have too many of these this season. We want to make the most of the season we have.”
(Photo Credit: Chicago Tribune)
Tonight, when Glenbrook South hosts Hersey in a boys game, the race to March 13 begins. The uncertainty of what lies ahead is sure to cause feelings of anxiety for many of those involved in planning and executing the compressed season.
But the abridged format also leaves room for creativity and a change up in approach. One often repeated maxim thus far—and in the coming weeks—is plan for the worst, hope for the best.
And be grateful for every second.
“For a guy that has been a head coach for a long as I have, I’m doing things I’ve never done before with regard to preparation and things we are emphasizing early in the season,” Lavorato said. “I’m excited and I’m open minded to a lot things.”