By Dewey Terrill
JC Post
Extracurricular activities and the planning for them continues in Geary USD 475 during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Students enrolled in the the USD 475 remote learning option can still participate in Kansas State High School Athletic Association activities, said Matt Westerhaus, Junction City High School Athletics Director. "There's been discussion and conversation in regard to our co-curricular items such as band, debate, forensics, music, orchestra. We're working through those and trying to make sure we're able to provide that opportunity to our students and families if they so choose."
Westerhaus added officials are hoping to get more communication this week on how that will look.
Fall sports practices can begin Aug. 17. The middle and high school head coaches reviewed guidelines from KSHSAA on how to conduct those operations, and Westerhaus said they will work to simplify as much as possible to get the information to the Health Department and District personnel so they're okay with it, "and not try to complicate anybody but try to simplify how we're going to operate and provide a safe environment for our students, for our staff and hopefully for participants that enter our KSHSAA sanctioned activities that we hopefully can host in the near future."
Questions were asked by Board members. For example if the JCHS teams plan to travel to another city, but Geary and Riley Counties are a hot spot, so they're not wanted, will the Junction City teams be penalized with a loss? Westerhaus doesn't have that answer yet. "We have a league meeting tomorrow ( Tuesday ). That is one of the items of discussion that we're going to talk about. How does that play out? How does a county that has a mask requirement in everything that they do, we want to follow that when we go in."
The Athletics Director said there will be many things unknown going into the fall with second, third, fourth order changes. "There's going to be potentially a lot of schedule changes. It's going to be a day to day what's going to happen next." Westerhaus noted it's his gut instinct that hopefully there could be efforts to reschedule, but it would depend on the sport if possible. "I don't think anyone wants to penalize a team for an unfortunate situation or something they don't have control over. "
Westerhaus stated that they're "trying to control stuff they don't have a lot of control over and it's frustrating."
This will continue to be a fluid situation, and Westerhaus will report back to District officials following the Centennial League meeting on Tuesday.