The Kentucky High School Athletic Association voted Thursday to nix its yearly “dead period,” a late-summer span in which organized sports practice is disallowed.
"We've had a three-month dead period,” board member Scott Hawkins said. “I don't think we need to keep a dead period now, based on the fact that we've basically had a dead period since March 16.”
Fellow board member Mark Evans agreed, saying the unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic made the period redundant. Players didn’t need a break from training that didn’t happen.
The 2020 dead period had been scheduled for June 25-July 9. Teams that would otherwise have taken those 15 days off can instead hold normal pre-season practices as long as they obey Gov. Andy Beshear's orders pertaining to youth sports.
The KHSAA canceled all its spring sports in late April, following Beshear’s decision to close all K-12 schools for the remainder of the 2019-’20 school year in order to protect students from COVID-19. Archery, fishing, esports, baseball, softball, tennis and track were called off; so were highly anticipated state basketball tournaments.
Kentucky spent the month of May slowly reopening some parts of its economy. Beshear has not made a hard announcement about what K-12 students and their families should expect from the fall semester.
