Team loyalties are traditionally identified by school colors, but everyone will be pulling for green and yellow this fall.
Gov. Jim Justice unveiled on Friday the basis for his proposed color-coded system that will be used to determine whether schools can open safely or be forced to go to remote learning. That same system will be used to decide the fate of high school sports teams’ ability to play and practice.
Justice first mentioned the system in his daily briefing on Aug. 5. There will be four colors — green, yellow, orange and red. Each county will be assessed those colors based on a seven-day rolling cumulative average of Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people.
An average of 0 to 7 will be green, 8-15 yellow, 16-24 orange and 25 and above red.
Justice said any county in red, at any point, will not only be forced out of school, but sports will be postponed until that county gets itself back down to yellow.
He also provided an example of a county that had been in the green or yellow range jumping up to orange at any point in the season. Teams in that county would not be allowed to play in games, but would be permitted to practice under similar guidelines for summer conditioning set forth in June by the Secondary School Activities Commission.
The seven-day numbers will be posted each Saturday night at 9 p.m. to be used for the next seven-day period.
“Let’s just say that you’re in the green or the yellow and then on Saturday night you drift into the orange category. At that point in time, you can’t actively play competition until you pull back down into the yellow and green,” Justice said. “ … Let’s just say that in the middle of the week, on the rolling average that you’re watching every day, in the middle of the week, on Wednesday, you noticed that your county drifted into the orange. You’ll be allowed to play games until the weekend on Saturday night, because we can’t put it together any other way. The scheduling is too difficult.”
In such a case, that particular county would then not be permitted to play as of the 9 p.m. Saturday deadline and would have to get back to yellow or green before being allowed to resume.
Justice said a map displaying each county's color would be presented weekly by the DHHR. At the time of the announcement that map was not available but it was released late Friday evening and confirmed Logan as the only red county. That means Logan County sports teams will not be allowed to practice on Monday, the first day of practice for fall sports in West Virginia.
Mingo and Grant are both orange. There are 11 yellow counties and 41 green.
Locally, Greenbrier, Nicholas and Monroe counties are green. Raleigh, Fayette, Summers and Wyoming are yellow. All seven will be permitted to begin practice on Monday.
SSAC executive director Bernie Dolan was on hand and expressed his confidence that the system can work. He said he is in weekly calls with representatives of each of the eight surrounding states and with the NFHS and believes this system is unique to all others.
“Our coaches and administrators have shown that they can handle and they can follow the guidelines. I think we have done it very well, very safely,” Dolan said. “As you notice that our color code works hand-in-hand with the color code for the schools. Extracurricular activities are just that — extra. We think this system will allow communities to get behind the initiative to move the color closer to green and to finally get to green.
“There will be incentives for communities to move, and we think with our coaches and administrators and players all leading the way, we think we are going to head in the right direction. We will work with the administrators to deal with the limited spectators as we get into the yellow and green that will allow spectators at the games.”
Justice said private and Christian schools that have sports will also follow the guidelines.
Email: gfauber@register-herald.com and follow on Twitter @GaryFauber
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