High school sports practices for indoor sports, hockey and basketball, took to the courts and the ice on Monday with the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District allowing practice under strict mitigation plans and COVID-19 protocols. The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District cleared the way for practices for basketball and hockey, however, programs still await the KPBSD approval for games and contests.
The first basketball games are scheduled for January 21st and the first hockey game for January 22nd. Right now, no scheduled games have been approved to be contested.
The COVID-19 mitigation protocols are established to allow the opportunity for high school athletes to participate in indoor (basketball and hockey) sports in a healthy and safe manner. The protocols include points of emphasis, practice requirements which include screening, designated event monitor, facilities usage, participant expectations, and equipment & area cleaning procedures. The protocols also establish specific requirements for screening of athletes, coaches, personnel, and spectators.
The district’s approval of games will be based on numerous factors and may be instituted on a week-by-week basis.
KPBSD Director of Communications Peggy Erkeneff discussed the district’s efforts and plans.
“We’re following the mitigation plans. We are looking closely at each of the different region areas and planning and ops is working closely with whatever is happening with the case counts and what we are going to be able to do for those scheduled games. And it may be a week-by-week basis vs a day-by-day. We still are red in all of our regions right now and at this point we haven’t opened it up for that (games). We are working on let’s get school open and let’s get everything in place so we can keep all of the sports going and we don’t have to close them down mid-season.”
“Everybody’s working on a daily basis, especially that team that works with that. Last week I said (to Kevin Lyon, Director of Planning and Operations) “Are we going to be able to do this on a day-by-day basis?” He said it’s probably to start off going to be more of a week-by-week because we really want to keep everything happening, practices happening, so that we don’t have to shut things down. So, we are opening slowly in hopes that very soon we can be really in a yellow-medium zone.”
Borough athletic directors have designed basketball and hockey schedules which allow for competition among Kenai Peninsula schools in the 3A and 4A classifications. Schedules are available on the main page at radiokenai.com.