SCISA AD Mike Fanning talks summer plans
High school football teams around the state of South Carolina have begun to reopen athletics activities after a long layoff in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The SCHSL and SCISA both have adopted guidelines set forth by the National Federation of High Schools, with the SCHSL leaving it up to districts as to when athletes could begin working out in groups again.
SCISA athletics director Mike Fanning went on the record this week with PalmettoPreps.com to shed some light on how his organization is fostering reopening for its member institutions.
"We allowed our schools to start this past Monday, June 1. Many did, some are going to wait until June 8 or June 15, what best fits their situations," Fanning explained.
SCISA is currently in phase one, with those guidelines featuring players working out in small groups without athletics equipment. A bump towards a higher phase is set to be in place within the next 10 days.
"Whether it’s phase 1.1 or phase 2, we’re looking around June 15 as far as our next step forward." Fanning said. "Passing a football, handing off a football, we’re probably going to introduce that around June 15, as long as nothing between now and June 15 tells us to slow down more. We fully anticipate to introduce the hand shields to where the coaches can start teaching some form tackling, at least walking through that. We’ll probably still keep our groups limited in size."
*** Not a member of PalmettoPreps.com? Subscribe today and get access to all our work and support our coverage of SC high school football. ***
Fanning said that 7-on-7 will not be introduced immediately on June 15, as the preference is to allow coaches and players to reintroduce equipment, then hold for a week to 10 days to see if any schools report an uptick of any medical issues or positive tests. If all is well at that time, 7-on-7 could be on the board.
"As we teach new habits to these kids we’ve never had before, it’s a good learning period that we really think we’re going to be doing throughout the season," said Fanning.
Current policies for workouts include practices such as pre-practice medical screenings and temperature checks, hand washing breaks during practice, plus a ban on sharing water bottles and equipment.
Said Fanning: "Our approach is to gradually get there because we want to play Week Zero in August. When the governor allowed recreational and youth sports to come back on June 1 and start playing competitively on June 15, that’s going to provide us with a lot of good information. You’ve got travel baseball and softball teams that are really rushing to get ready for June 15. We’re not in a rush because we ‘re getting ready for Week Zero in August for football. We feel like we’re going to get there."
Fanning also noted that with such a long layoff, that players have had quite the adjustment period in getting back into playing shape.
"We have two and half months of inactivity, so even the conditioning and getting back to running and doing plyometiric training and weight training is really needed right now," said Fanning.
In order to accommodate the challenges of lifting weights in usually crowded weight rooms, Fanning said that teams are getting creative. Fanning has seen schools move weight benches outside to get 10 feet between the equipment and players learning to spot from the outside of the bar in order to stay six feet away, for example.
The typical dead periods that SCISA features in the month of July have also been jettisoned in order to maximize prep time heading into the season.
"A football coach could have only had 12 organized workouts, but we’re removing the two dead periods this summer which would have been the week of fourth of July and that last week of July up to our first practice, so we feel like we’re going to give them enough days to start teaching and implementing," Fanning said. "Our first week, once we get into it, we can get back into helmets pretty easily, helmets and shoulder pads. We feel pretty good where we are and how well the reports are of how the kids have done."
Informed consent and risk assumption will be two terms that may be introduced to the lexicon of high school football supporters this season as well.
"I don’t think any organization in the world has a better legal team than Walt Disney. They’re reopening their park and have on their website a disclaimer, a COVID-19 warning. It basically just summarizes that it’s impossible to eliminate risk in a public situation, a public event, that there’s also a risk to exposure to infectious disease such as influenza and COVID-19," Fanning explained. "Participation in athletics and watching athletics are both voluntary in nature, so if a student realizes that a school is going to provide the best practices possible and we’re going to continue to monitor the medical trends, that we feel like to some degree they have assumed some of the risk, just like the risk of injury, the inherent risk of playing sports."
Another issue that high school football across the country will have to deal with is the challenge of having fans in the stands while potentially maintaining distance. That, according to Fanning, is an aspect that SCISA ball is better suited to address.
"One of the blessings of being smaller is, most of our schools are football teams of 20, we don't have 50, 60 kids. I wish we had 3 or 4,000 in the stands, that’s not our situation," Fannins said. "Logistically, by being smaller, we’ll be more flexible, more agile to encourage social distancing. You can social distance a lot from end zone to end zone sitting in lawn chairs with a couple hundred, where you can’t with a couple thousand."
*** Also see: Top 2023 and 2024 SCISA prospects to watch ***
At games, SCISA is looking into distancing practices such as having families sit together and then skipping a row for the next group. Possible postgame changes include looking at "head nods" instead of player handshake lines and lining up on the opposite side of the 50 for postgame prayers instead of the traditional huddle.
"The biggest thing is the interaction after the game when mom wants to go down on the field and hug son and other teammates. When the game is over, send them a text or call them on the phone, get back to the parking lot and let them go to the locker room," said Fanning.
Overall, Fanning is quite optimistic regarding the potential of an on-time start.
"Regardless of a vaccine or not, I think short of state mandates, state requirements, we are planning to be open and going Week Zero. Of course, if there are any state or federal mandates, we will follow those. We will implement the best medical practices that we can, but we realize in football that you cannot social distance and play football. We’re going to try to slowly get them there and we can see definitely throughout the season still doing the daily medical screenings, still emphasizing the sanitation, still keeping tabs with how are our kids doing, how are our coaches doing. This is not an at-risk group, our 15, 16, 17 year olds, but that doesn’t make it any less serious. We want to be very mindful of the medical guidelines but also we realize that we may have to do the best we can with the medical practice," he said.
A new sense of joy for the game could be another byproduct of the time away from the game for coaches and players alike.
Said Fanning: "We’re excited about the upcoming season and its challenges. We think by closing those last two and a half months, that many coaches realized what their first love was, that their first love was working with these kids. Sometimes we lose that, and not being out there with our kids and watching them grow and fail and pick themselves back up, I think you’re going to see coaches with a renewed passion. The kids themselves realize that much of life is a treasure, you need to size the moment and take advantage of every moment you’re given."