Anticipating a delay
Holtville's Athletic Director doesn't expect Fall sports to start on time.
Holtville Vikings Athletics has seen an overall resurgence over the past several years; especially in the sports of football, baseball, softball and volleyball.
Going into this last Spring season, the Vikings had a number of promising teams poised to make some noise in the Imperial Valley League and potential playoff play.
The noise was quieted by mid-March, as the Coronavirus Pandemic already began to effect the Desert Southwest; as virtually every sports program was shut down almost overnight.
Since then, the Vikes met disappointment as weeks of lock-down turned into months.
As we're only several weeks away from the potential start to the Fall prep sports season, the pandemic is as startling as ever with high numbers of positive cases continuing to be reported throughout the area.
Even though Holtville High School has it's distance learning system in place for the start of the coming Fall, the Vikings (amongst every other sports program) are waiting and anticipating the eventual slide of COVID cases.
Athletic Director C.J. Johnston is staying in contact with other A.D.'s across the Imperial Valley, in hopes to formulating a plan whenever the State of California and the Imperial County Health Department give the clearance to allow students and student athletes back on campus.
The CIF-San Diego Section commissioner is expected to make an announcement on July 20th to give the status of the area's Fall sports programs in conjuction with the ongoing pandemic.
But, with no end in sight, Johnston doesn't believe that it's very likely that the season will start on time and the delay time itself is hard to predict.
"I think at this point, it's very realistic. You know, probably the probability of starting on time is not high right now for us where we're at in (the) Imperial Valley. We probably won't be able to start until we get the green light to have kids on campus. So, the minute we can get kids on campus in some form or fashion, then we'll probably be when we can start relooking at starting back at some sort of practices."
