South Jersey Sports Report: NJSIAA Makes Adjustments to High School Sports Schedules

The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association today announced modifications to the sports schedule for 2020-21 in its continuing effort to keep high school sports alive for New Jersey’s student-athletes.

Today the NJSIAA announced a new schedule for winter sports (basketball, wrestling, swimming, indoor track) that shortens and adjusts the schedule.

Under the traditional schedule, the winter season would have started on Dec. 18 and the regular season ended on Feb. 28 for basketball. The state basketball tournament would have run from March 1-14 with the Tournament of Champions being played from March 15-22. Wrestling would have held districts Feb. 26-27 followed by regions and the state tournament the first two weekends in March.

But today’s announcement set the start of the winter season at Dec. 21 and the end of the regular season at Feb. 3 – cutting nearly four weeks off the schedule. Practice for winter sports, which normally would have begun on Nov. 23, will start on Dec. 2.

An NJSIAA basketball tournament would likely follow the regular season, though no specific format for the post-season was announced.

Girls volleyball, which is normally a fall sport, is being scheduled for a March 3 start along with gymnastics. There are currently 10 schools in the Cape-Atlantic League that have varsity girls volleyball teams. They had announced a traditional fall schedule but will now have to re-create it for March.

No changes were announced regarding the other fall sports. Currently, practice for football, soccer, field hockey and cross country may begin on Sept. 14 with girls tennis allowed to begin matches on Sept. 28 and the other sports on Oct. 2.

No announcement was made regarding spring sports, though you can expect the NJSIAA to make every effort to give those athletes as full a season as possible because they lost their season this year.