Executive Director Sally Marquez made clear that due to public health order limiting gatherings to no more than five it will affect the limitations of the student-athlete to coach ratio within pods.
Last week the governor changed the public health order, limiting any mass gathering to no more than five people. Does that change the pod size for teams to work out?
It does change the pod size. We were in a 9-to-1 ratio, which is nine student-athletes to one coach. With the mass gathering size at five, we are now at four student-athletes to one coach. We cannot have more than 5 within a pod.
Has it been decided where cross country and volleyball have been moved on the calendar for the second semester?
We'll be announcing that in the next couple of days. Right now, we are really focusing in on volleyball to make sure, especially in our small schools, that basketball and volleyball are not overlapping too much and that there is minimal overlap between volleyball and track. In small schools, those are the three sports that most of our female student-athletes play. In cross country, we did talk to the coaches and they would like a five-week season. So we are going to put that in a place on the calendar where the athlete can compete in cross country and then take a little bit of a break before they start track and field.
A five-week season for cross country will significantly downsize competition among conflicting schedules of likely volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball, and swimming also to be held during the early start of the spring semester. An initial schedule will be expected to be released later this week.