During today’s COVID-19 press conference with Governor Jim Justice, the head of the West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission officially announced that all fall sports have not been canceled but will be moved back.

 

“We are also pushing back our practice days. Instead of starting on August 3, which most fall sports started before with the exception of volleyball, we’re moving the start of all our practice activities to August 17,” said WVSSAC Executive Director Bernie Dolan. “We’re working backwards because we have to have so many practices.”

 

Golf, which only requires just a few practices, can have their first contest August 24, he said. Dolan also said volleyball, cross country and soccer can compete beginning Wednesday, Sept. 2.

 

Football will see the first games on Thursday, Sept. 3. That will be followed by the traditional large slate of Friday games starting Sept. 4.

 

As for fans, they are not being ruled out. However, Dolan said fans will almost certainly be seeing restrictions if they are allowed to attend.

 

“We’ll probably have limitations on attendance varying from community to community and sport to sport,” said Dolan, who added face masks will be required for fans.

 

Justice said he and Dolan both want sports to happen. Both also emphasized a lot will be determined by the numbers in the days and weeks ahead. Dolan said a lot depends on the community and whether they opt to follow guidelines, such as wearing masks.

 

“We may have to change, and we may have to change again … There is no playbook here,” said Justice regarding the new dates and other items talked about by Dolan.

 

The new dates by Dolan come after Justice announced the opening date for schools had been pushed back statewide earlier this week. The new date is Sept. 8.

 

“If we can, we’re going to do it safely and we’re going to do it right,” said Justice of sports.

 

When asked if the calendar today was the start of the prep sports season in West Virginia, would things be starting. Justice said "no," but added that there needs to "be a plan" and there has to be "hope" that it can be done. Dolan said it would be a "difficult time" to do it right now. Dolan added that two to three weeks ago he was confident practices would have started August 3 based on past numbers.

 

Dolan said he anticipates that there will be cases of teams having players test positive. He said, as a result, there will be times that "teams will have to sit down" as a result. In that case, he said those would be ruled as "no contests."

 

Justice went over numbers and said there are concerning figures from the state. He said in the last 24 hours West Virginia has witnessed 130 cases and a daily positive rate of 3.86 percent. There has been an increase of 437 cases since last Friday, the governor said.

 

“We had many days below a half a percent and 3.86 percent is not where we want to be,” said Justice.

 

Even with those numbers, Justice said the state’s hospital were not struggling.

 

“Our hospitals are in great shape. Only 50 hospitalize right now,” said Justice. “We all know we can have a hot spot can be anywhere, and that hot stop is Monongalia County.”

 

Justice said 246 active cases are in place in Monongalia County. He said since the pandemic Monongalia County has had more than 400 cases.

 

“We have to be looking now at closing the bars. We have to be looking now at closing indoor dining unless we get a real movement and moving in our direction. It’s the last thing we want to do … We’re going to have to look at restricting our gatherings statewide,” said Justice.

 

Justice said he is waiting for numbers from his health experts before a decision is made. He added that it could be Monongalia County along with others if numbers keep going up.

 

The governor pleaded for people to wear masks. He said that wearing masks was “the only bullet” he had in his gun to battle COVID-19. The other bullet would be shutting everything down again.

 

“I trust West Virginians to be honorable,” said Justice of wearing masks on the mandatory mask order that does not currently have penalties. “… The other day we made it mandatory. We’re making great strides … People are doing a lot better, but we need to flawless.”

 

Dr. Clay Marsh said West Virginia is also on the wrong end of the Rt numbers, or the route of transmission, is now the worst in the country. He said it is spreading more person to person than any state in the country.

 

Justice did start the press conference with what he called good news.

 

“We have not had an additional death in West Virginia since Monday. That’s great … We lost 95 West Virginians, that’s 95 too many,” said Justice.

 

Justice also announced that Dr. Ayne Amjad will be the state’s new Commissioner for the Bureau of Public Health. Amjad, a Marshall graduate, is out of Beckley, he said, who specializes in internal medicine.

 

Below is a list of free testing sites today, tomorrow and into next week.

 

 

Editor's Note: Top photo is a screen shot of Bernie Dolan, while Gov. Jim Justice is shown below.