Video: Jayden Ballard Highlights Watch Ohio's No. 2 overall prospect in action in last year's state final.
The Ohio Department of Health on Tuesday issued an executive order allowing contact and non-contact competition to resume for all sports on a short-term basis if teams agree to a certain set of guidelines. The message was delivered by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted during their daily press conference and via Twitter.
The health guidelines include testing players and coaches for the COVID-19 before and during competition along with daily symptom assessment, strict social distancing by players not actively engaged in practice or competition, and immediate isolation and medical care for a participant who develops symptoms.
Athletics trainers are to wear masks while they're "strongly recommended" for coaches and officials.
"Tournaments, games and scrimmages between teams for contact sports are only permissible so long as the teams agree to the list of guidelines in the order, including such things as testing of coaches, players, athletic trainers, support staff (and) officials before travel to the competition and during," Husted said during Tuesday's statewide broadcast. "These restrictions are required for any of these types of (competitions) to happen."
Husted said the order in part came about due to The Basketball Tournament, which started on Saturday and will continue in the upcoming days in Columbus.
The ODH intends to re-evaluate the order after July 15.
The Ohio High School Athletic Association has been in a Phase 2 order for contact sports since June 18. Until now, teams in full-contact sports (i.e. football and basketball) were allowed to hold intra-squad scrimmages but were not allowed to play teams from other schools. Now they can.
The announcement comes two days after the OHSAA announced that competition would be permitted at residential team camps.
Husted also announced Tuesday the launch of the #IWantASeason awareness campaign, which "aims to engage athletes and younger Ohioans in efforts to slow the spread of the virus." The OHSAA posted on Twitter that it has joined the #IWantASeason initiative.
In a memo sent to member schools Tuesday night, the OHSAA says it is still planning for fall sports practices to start Aug. 1 and that it plans to hold postseason tournaments "in all fall sports."
The announcements come less than 24 hours after the OHSAA named Bob Goldring its interim executive director, replacing Jerry Snodgrass, who served as the organization's executive director for the last two years.
Snodgrass was relieved of his duties Monday by the OHSAA Board of Directors.
"The board of directors felt it necessary to go in a different direction with OHSAA leadership. We cannot go into more detail at this time,” OHSAA senior director of communications Tim Stried said.
In a press release, the OHSAA said that it "will conduct a nationwide search beginning immediately to fill the executive director vacancy."
Goldring, who has been on staff for 25 years and has functioned as senior director of operations since 2008, served as acting OHSAA executive director for three months in 2016 when then-director Dr. Dan Ross was out attending to health issues.
Snodgrass last month confirmed that the OHSAA was in a financial hardship due to lost ticket revenue from the winter and spring state finals (roughly $2 million). The OHSAA does not charge a membership fee and gets 78 percent of its revenue from postseason ticket sales.
