By CLAIRE CRUZ, Staff Writer
HARLINGEN — After a long wait, the six East Valley Class 6A fall sports teams are finally in single digits as they count down to their return.
Brownsville Hanna, Brownsville Rivera, Harlingen High, Harlingen South, Los Fresnos and San Benito all will be starting their fall athletic seasons Oct. 5. The seven-game District 32-6A football slate will begin Oct. 23. The volleyball teams in 32-6A will only play one round of district beginning Oct. 24.
The University Interscholastic League is allowing two consecutive weeks of virtual workouts to serve as a substitute for the week of strength and conditioning mandated upon a football team’s return to practice. So, the 6A programs will be jumping right into the acclimatization period Oct. 5 since they’ve been doing workouts from home throughout the summer and start of the virtual school year.
“They’ve been doing strength and conditioning, really, our kids have been going non-stop. Once we started school, they picked it up another gear,” Harlingen CISD athletic director Robert Davies said. “The UIL is counting our remote days of strength and conditioning in place of the five days they’ve been requiring (of) other people, so we were very fortunate they granted that.”
While the Brownsville ISD athletic department decided to only compete at the varsity level this fall, Davies said Harlingen CISD will be fielding teams at all levels, including middle school.
San Benito athletic director and football coach Dan Gomez confirmed the Greyhounds will have subvarsity and middle school teams competing as well.
Los Fresnos athletic director and football coach Patrick Brown said the Falcons will have one freshmen and one JV team, along with varsity.
Harlingen CISD released its plan to transition back to campus in phases Tuesday, which will bring some changes to the athletic period during the school day. Davies said face-to-face and hybrid learners — the hybrid option means students are only on campus certain days — will participate in the athletic period according to their schedule and where they fall in the transition phase. Remote learners will only practice before and after school.
As the start date approaches, Davies said East Valley coaches and athletic directors understand that “COVID-19 is a formidable opponent,” but they’ve done the research and made investments in safety equipment to be as prepared as possible to return to play.
“The difference between now and the spring is we’ve had all this time to plan and prepare, so it’s a lot different,” Davies said. “We’re a lot more educated, we have a better understanding of what’s going on and we’ve made some investments on some different things to be able to keep everyone safe. We believe in our protocols and all the things we’ve been working on.”