Athletic directors around the state have been scrambling to get ready for an abbreviated season after the state and Maine Principals’ Association made their final decision Thursday to approve some sports to be played this fall.

Mt. Blue and Buckfield, along with several other high schools, will learn next week after their school boards meet whether their sports programs will be allowed to play.

The state and MPA nixed football and volleyball, but gave the green light to field hockey, golf, soccer and cross country. But each school needs the OK from its school board.

Spruce Mountain already has found that school-board approval is no guarantee.

Hours after the MPA and state announced their joint decision, Regional School Unit 73 directors met and voted to approve the high school and middle school teams to compete against other teams in the Mountain Valley Conference in golf and cross country only. Soccer and field hockey can only compete within the Spruce Mountain community.

The MPA and state’s decision allows state-wide competition in cross country and golf, and regional competition, with no playoffs, for field hockey and boys and girls soccer.

Mt. Blue will find out its fate when the school board votes on Tuesday.

“We continue the excruciating holding pattern,” Mt. Blue athletic director Chad Brackett said. “We won’t know until Tuesday. For now, we are trying to figure out what to do between now and when the decision is made.

“The board is going to have the ultimate decision. I don’t really know and I don’t want to comment on what that is really going to be.”

Buckfield athletic director Cortney Sirois is also awaiting word about her school’s sports programs.

“We have a school board meeting Monday night (and we will) bring it before our board and get their approval, and then hopefully we will be able to have a season — at least eight to 10 games regionally scheduled,” Sirois said. “Our kids have been doing this —(with) the restrictions — since July 6 so they are ready to go.”

“(Mountain Valley athletic director) Tom Danylik and I are going before our board Monday night just to answer any questions they might have. We will see if they want to vote on it or not, and then hopefully go from there. I am confident in that we will be able to move forward with the sports that we can have.”

Leavitt athletic director Ryan LaRoche said the Hornets will play football interscholastically in some sort of 7-on-7 format. He added that the school board already voted on sports programs two weeks ago.

“We will have that and everything else that is being offered — at least for a regular-season competition that we offer,” he said. “We don’t have volleyball, so that is not an issue. Soccer and field hockey (will be a) regionalized local schedule. It looks like a 10-game schedule, probably five teams home and away, but there may be some exceptions to that.” 

LaRoche said that the Hornets golf team will play a regional regular-season schedule and a KVAC championship, and there will be individual and team championships. 

“Cross country is going to be a short, regionalized schedule for the regular season, and they are saying that it is a low-level risk sport, so we should be able to have statewide competition. They believe that we are going to have regional and state championships, but they don’t know what that is going to look like just yet,” LaRoche said.

“We are super happy to be able to offer something up to our kids. I know it is not exactly what we would be doing in the fall. I know there is frustration that football is not going to look like normal football, unless we get to it in the spring, with the postponement. We are happy that we are able to offer at least something resembling each of our normal fall sports.”

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