High School Football Teams Cautiously Prepare for 2020 Season

With high school football scheduled to start in August, Indiana teams are cautiously preparing amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

And not only is the return to the classroom a hot topic for the upcoming school year... more looming questions tonight about what the return of high school sports will look like.

44 sports reporter andrew garcia has that story.

Coming into thursday, there are just over 54 thousand confirmed cases of covid-19 in the state of indiana, and with high school football scheduled to start next month, teams are continuing to prepare for the season, but with caution.

We haven't been able to have pads on these first two weeks.

I know we will next week.

So that's been a little different, we've missed out on a lot of 7 on 7 tournaments and 7 on 7 practices and weights are different.

We have questions we have to ask them everyday when they come in.

We take temperatures.

So far we've done everything outside.

No locker room, no weight room.

We've moved a lot of our weigh stuff outside, again just to try with the social distancing.

We're following obviously all the guidelines and stuff that are getting passed down from the state and local people and our school district.

Keeping players and fans safe is the primary concern for teams and schools and with cases continuing to rise, school leaders are closely monitoring the governor's reopen plan and heeding the advice of health officials.

I cannot tell you how proud i am of our coaches, our student athletes, and the families and how much they have worked hard to follow these guidelines and how important it is to our families, coaches, and parents to return safely.

At evsc we've had zero positive cases as of today.

Coach hart told me that while playing in front of limited fans or no fans at all would be different, but the team is prepared to do whatever is necessary to keep everyone safe and have a season, for 44 sports, i'm andrew garcia