EDINA, Minn. — Aside from the summer-like temperatures, the scene outside of Bantam hockey tryouts at Braemar Arena looked fairly typical on Friday afternoon – at first glance, at least.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, parents largely stayed in the car after dropping their teenagers in the parking lot. The players put their pads on from the back trunk of vehicles, unable to dress inside the locker room. All of them wore masks as they walked through the front doors of the facility.
“We’ve been skating all summer. With proper precautions, it seems to have gone well,” Marty McClees said from the driver’s seat of his truck, after his son attended the tryouts. “It’ll be interesting to see, once teams are picked, what the regulations are.”
That begs the question: What will the season look like in 2020-2021 for boys and girls hockey, particularly at the high school level?
After approving a restart in the fall for football and volleyball, the Minnesota State High School League plans to discuss winter sports at a meeting on Oct. 1 and will likely make a decision, a spokesperson confirmed. Although the course of action remains unclear, the stipulations for both boys and girls hockey will probably mirror each other.
The Minnesota Hockey Coaches Association would like to see the season start on time in November, with universal safety precautions for all teams.
“Varsities and JVs might have to be kept apart, coaches will be two on a bench, have to wear a mask, kids in the locker room – that space will have to be limited,” MHCA president-elect Michael Taylor said. “They’ll have to wear masks when off the ice.”
The MHCA has proposed two scenarios for an on-time schedule. One scenario would permit just one game per week against regional opponents, while another would allow for two games a week against the same opponent to limit exposure. Playing just one opponent per week might also make contact tracing easier, Taylor said.
“We want to do this,” Taylor said, “but we want to do it safe, and keep kids safe.”
Chaska Boys Hockey co-head coach Sean Bloomfield said he’d support a schedule where his team played against the same opponent multiple times in one week – anything to get back to hockey. His Hawks last took the ice on Feb. 26 in a section final against Eden Prairie, ultimately losing and narrowly missing a chance to qualify for the celebrated state tournament in St. Paul.
That tournament was one of the final mass gatherings in Minnesota before COVID-19 changed everyone’s world.
“At that time, I was just thinking about the immediate future. No possibility in my mind that it would last this long,” Bloomfield said. “Never in a million years would I think we’d be trying to navigate Halloween with COVID. It’s like each new month brings up a new challenge.”
Bloomfield is forging ahead for 2020-21 preparations, however, as he awaits a decision from the Minnesota State High School League next week.
He has some reason for optimism based on the results of summer and fall training sessions, which did not appear to show major spread of COVID-19 among the thousands of boys and girls playing hockey across the state. According to the MHCA, only one team had to shut down competition for a 14-day quarantine, due to an exposure that occurred outside of the team setting.
“Our hope is still to have a full season, or as close to a full season as possible. That’s what we are planning for,” Bloomfield said. “We know there are other contingencies in place, and when those come up, we’re just going to have to roll with the punches and be able to adapt to whatever we learn about.”
