<p>Hunt</p>

Hunt

<p>Register</p>

Register

LUMBERTON — Local athletes will have to follow some stringent guidelines when athletic workouts begin Monday at the high-school level, after the Robeson County Board of Education approved the Public Schools of Robeson County’s plan for workouts to resume during its Thursday meeting.

The board’s approval came after Public Schools of Robeson County athletic director Jerome Hunt presented the plan during the meeting.

Athletes will be required before each workout to check in at the entrance to the facility and be cleared to participate, Hunt said. This will include a temperature check and a COVID-19 questionnaire. If a parent is dropping the athlete off, they will need to stay until after the athlete has been cleared.

Athletes are asked to arrive no more than 15 minutes before the workout, and for those driving to practice social distancing by parking in every other space. Athletes will need to come wearing their workout clothes, and to wear those clothes home, so that locker rooms will not have to be used.

Each athlete will have to bring their own water bottles and towels, and will be required to wear a mask. If they do not have a mask, one will be provided.

Before participating in any workouts, students will need to make sure their forms are updated on the PlanetHS website. PSRC uses the service for athletic forms regarding eligibility, concussions and phyiscals.

Coaches will be giving further sport-specific details to their athletes.

“This is going to take a lot of work, on the coaches part and the ADs part, to make sure this plan works,” Hunt told The Robesonian. “But everybody’s willing to do their part to make sure we keep (the athletes) safe while we’re working out, that’s the main thing.”

The county’s plan is nearly identical to plans in other surrounding counties, Hunt said, and many coaches and athletic directors around the region have shared ideas on how workouts could safely resume.

Each team will currently be allowed to work out two days per week, which will allow for each school’s various teams to stagger workouts throughout the week and limit the number of athletes on campus at one time. Each sport will be allowed to increase to four workouts per week as it gets closer to the date of the first competition.

Volleyball and cross country, the first sports in which competition will resume in November, will be the first sports to resume workouts Monday, Hunt said in the meeting. The following week, Sept. 28, boys and girls basketball can begin workouts. They will be followed by football, softball and boys soccer on Oct. 5; girls soccer, baseball and boys and girls tennis on Oct. 12 and track on Oct. 19.

Whether cheerleading teams can resume activities will be left to the discretion of each high school’s principal.

Mackie Register, athletic director and head volleyball and softball coach at Lumberton, said he expects the guidelines will take some getting used to, but will eventually those participating will adjust.

“There are still some restrictions; it’s not like we’re going to bust in on Monday and start playing volleyball,” Register said. “It’s not going to be normal as we know it, but as we get going through and doing these things … it’ll become habit, and a month from now it’ll be routine for us.”

As coach of one of the first two sports back, Register expects everyone else will be watching his team to see how things go the first week of workouts.

“We set the precedent for the other sports,” Register said. “Of course, every sport’s going to have their challenges.

“With me being the AD and the head volleyball coach, I’m kind of glad to get to go first and kind of be the guinea pig, and be able go through the stuff first hand, the procedures and how things are going to go and getting the kids acclimated to how we’re going to do things.”

Register said his volleyball team plans to separate workouts into one for freshman and sophomores and another for juniors and seniors. Athletes will be separated into small “pods” within each workout.

All sports at Lumberton plan to give each athlete a bucket to hold their water bottle and towel, as well as their mask when they are doing an activity such as running where they are allowed to take it off. This is to prevent any potential contamination of those items, or them accidentally being mixed up between athletes.

Water coolers at Lumberton will also have the ability to automatically dispense water, allowing for handless use.

“We’re trying to do our due diligence to make sure we’re trying to keep everybody safe,” Register said. “We’re going to try to keep it confined, so that if something does break out, we’ll know who the pods were and who might have been infected.”

All athletic activities in Robeson County have been suspended since March 13 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This is a day we’ve been waiting for,” Hunt said. “The coaches are excited about it; the athletes are excited about it.”

Hunt made it clear that all workouts are optional, as mandated — even in normal times — by the North Carolina High School Athletic Association.

“If any student or parent does not feel comfortable with the workouts, that’s OK,” Hunt said in the meeting. “Nothing will be held against them.”

NCHSAA guidelines currently limit skill development activites, which includes workouts, to 25 participants indoors and 50 outdoors. This is consistent with state guidelines as North Carolina remains in Phase 2.5 of its COVID-19 recovery.

Chris Stiles can be reached at 910-816-1977 or by email at [email protected]. You can follow him on Twitter at @StilesOnSports.