Monday, Aug. 16. It gets real.
Conditioning week is over and high school sports teams begin practice for what they hope will be a normal school year.
The 2020-21 sports year turned into a compressed sprint of six-week seasons that started with February football practices and ended with a state wrestling tournament that occurred more than two weeks after graduation. Weird year.
So, the folks at Silverton and Kennedy are hoping for a heap of normal and no interruptions from the COVID-19 Delta variant this fall… and beyond.
The Oregon School Activities Association has put it simply. Masks are not required outdoors. They are recommended but not required for indoor sports, with the OSAA noting that that is a local decision. The federal Centers for Disease Control mandates mask use on school buses.
Because the fall sports of football, cross country and soccer are all played outdoors, that means only volleyball might, emphasis on might, be affected this fall.
Soccer, cross country and volleyball can start keeping score with events as of Aug. 26, with Sept. 3 the first football Friday. Silverton, 3-2 a “year” ago, opens at McGinnis Field against Class 6A Grant of Portland, with Kennedy, 5-1 last season, going on the road to Gaston.
“I read this morning that we will not be required to wear masks outside,” wrote Foxes coach Josh Craig in an email.
There is only one major coaching change at the two schools. And it involves both the Foxes and Trojans. Olivia Cock, who coached the Silverton junior varsity last season, takes over as the head coach at Kennedy, which was 18-0 with a 48-3 sets margin under Jessica Schmidtman.
“We are excited. She is doing a great job already,” said Kennedy athletic director Kevin Moffatt of Cock. “We lost an incredible group of girls and we will be really young and inexperienced, but she is jumping in head first and kids are excited.”
Moffatt also noted that Schmidtman is remaining with the program as JV coach.
Running: Beaverton resident, Keegan McCormick, a former collegiate runner for Boise State, ran away from the field in the Aug. 8 Homer’s Classic 8K covered bridge run and set a course record in the process with 24:16.4. McCormick, 25, averaged a sizzling 4:53 per mile. The old mark on the course was 26:57, set in 2019 by Donovan DeWhitt.
Kristen Rohde of Beaverton finished fourth overall and led women runners with a time of 28:54.9.
More than 70 runners participated in the 8K, which was run under partly cloudy skies with temperatures in the 60s.
An additional 37 individuals participated in the two-mile run/walk. Dakota Heard triumphed in 12:47.2, just ahead of Jeremiah Traeger, also of Silverton, who ran 12:52.8. Rachel Kintz of Scotts Mills was third in 13:15.1 and was the first female to finish.
Proceeds from the event benefit youth running programs in Silverton and
Mount Angel.
Follow me on Twitter.com @jameshday.
