As of Wednesday, high school athletes will have a chance to compete in the 2020 fall sports season.

The PIAA board of directors approved “Return to Competition” guidelines by a 29-3 vote on Wednesday’s Zoom conference.

“It has been a lot of effort from a lot of people,” said PIAA Executive Director Dr. Robert Lombardi. “Especially those 32 people that sit around that board table … We’ve really been working at this because we feel it’s vitally important to give our student athletes every opportunity to be student athletes. We are advocates for them. We are not dismissing the school day at all. I’m sitting here with a PhD., so that says education is very important to me. But that other part of it; educational athletics are vital to the growth and development of student athletes and their success.”

There are currently many unknowns such playoff scheduling, and there will be many other independent decisions that each league, district and school will have to make. Each school can choose one of three scheduling paths with different start dates for the fall; a regular, alternate, or hybrid start.

“We’re going to do what we’ve done from the start,” Lombardi said. “Work cooperatively with the department of education, department of health and the governor’s office. If they make the determination to direct schools not to play, we’ll adhere to that. That’s the best I can tell you today.”

More information can be found on the PIAA website and a full story will be available in Thursday’s Times News.