Craig Collins’ Monday began just as he’d been planning it ever since he was hired as Dirigo’s varsity football coach last spring.

“I still got up at 4 o’clock this morning,” Collins said.

Things went downhill from there for Collins and many high school fall sports coaches and athletes. As Mother Nature seemingly mocking them with an unmistakable autumn crispness to the morning air, the reality that fall sports would not be starting on time started to set in, followed by a hovering foreboding that they may never start in 2020.

Instead of preparing for what was originally scheduled to be the first day of fall high school sports practices and launching Dirigo into its first eight-man football season, Collins had more time to sip his coffee and contemplate an unknown future.

“It’s been a difficult day for me, and I’m sure for all of the coaches and kids,” Collins said.

In July, the Maine Principals’ Association pushed the first day of fall season to Sept. 8 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Sept. 18 tentatively scheduled as the first day of competition.

The MPA expects to make an announcement some time this week, and coaches and athletic directors expect that it will give a green light to the established start-up dates or shut the season down, just as spring sports were shut down a little before they started in March.

Coaches were prevented from having in-person contact with their athletes until the MPA started the first of two summer phases for workouts on July 6.  Schools in most of the state wrapped up the second phase last week, with only two athletes, both from Foxcroft Academy, reportedly testing positive for COVID-19. Superintendents of schools in Cumberland and York counties agreed to delay in-person sports activities until Aug. 26.

Poland girls soccer had 25 players participating in the summer workouts, following MPA and Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines throughout the team’s morning and evening sessions held two days per week.

When workouts ended Friday, varsity coach Kat Seeley sent players home with two weeks’ worth of workouts they could do on their own, but very few answers to the questions they had about whether they will be back together on the field this fall.

“I usually have everything planned out,” Seeley said, “and some of the girls were asking me for a schedule so they can let their work know when they’ll be available. I told them I can’t do that right now. We’re waiting for another announcement.”

“I would love to have a season,” Seeley added. “I know the girls showed us how much they want one with how hard they worked this summer.”

Seeley said students are hearing rumors and speculation on social media about the fate of the fall season and said athletic director Don King urged them not to feed the rumor mill.

Collins said the rumors put coaches “on edge,” too.

“It’s very difficult hearing the rumors, and I’m not going to buy into the rumors. I’m trying to stay off of social media,” Collins said.

Seeley noted coaches have their own questions, such as how fall athletics would mesh with some schools’ plans to keep students in cohorts, or with the same group of students throughout the school day to minimize the potential spread of the virus.

Lisbon, which is planning to return to full in-person classroom instruction on Sept. 8, had good participation numbers and full adherence to guidelines during summer workouts, athletic director Eric Hall said.

Like many other administrators, Hall has been keeping one eye on the rest of the country, other states and the NCAA to get an indication of what direction Maine high schools will follow, but said none of that, nor the MPA’s support for fall sports, will matter if the CDC or Maine Department of Education doesn’t think it would be safe.

“It’s frustrating for everybody,” Hall said. “But I know (MPA executive director) Mike Burnham and (assistant executive director) Mike Bisson are doing everything humanly possible to make fall sports happen.”

“You’ve got to keep an open mind,” Collins said. “Being a middle school athletic director (at Spruce Mountain), I understand what’s going on and know decisions are being made carefully.”

Middle school sports are not governed by the MPA, but middle school leagues typically follow MPA rules, Collins said. Administrators from the Capital Area League, the league Spruce Mountain Middle School belongs to, are scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss their fall season, he said.

“I’m on pins and needles,” he said. “I just want what’s best for the student-athletes, but my feeling right now is that it’s out of my hands.”

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