Athletic Director Discusses Changes Whether coaching a volleyball team or planning each seasons’ sports schedule, Athletic Director Jason Donnelly is always busy. Despite the unusual circumstances due to COVID-19, Donnelly works hard to give athletes the best sports season possible.
Where were the teams when sports had What was the inspiration for the after to be shut down? school sports program in September? We were early in our spring seasons last March when sports officially shut down. Our boys volleyball and boys tennis teams had a played a handful of matches and were off to a great start. Our girls sand volleyball team was just about to play their first match of the season when everything stopped.
When we started the school year remotely, we were able to find a way to get students on campus and working out in a safe, structured environment. We created the after-school training cohorts so that kids who were interested could come workout with their friends while following all of the protocols put in place. In fact, the 7th-grade group still How did the teams react to the meets every Tuesday. immediate stop? How do sports look now? For our boys volleyball team, in the week prior to the shutdown, we had Things regarding sports have been played three matches and went to a tour- moving forward recently. As COVID-19 nament down in LA. cases decreased in California and Santa After that Saturday tournament, we Barbara County, things became a little bit practiced on Monday, played a match at less restrictive. Foothill Tech on Tuesday, practiced on As we were one of the few campuses Wednesday and that evening was when in person, at least at the high school levthe NBA shut down, and I knew things el, we had to be very careful in how we were serious. did things in order to ensure that we were able to keep our students learning here on What types of things as an athletic campus rather than remotely. director did you have to reimagine? We were able to get many of our teams out there training, and a few were even to Everything had to be reimagined re- compete in a shortened season. garding athletics. There was a lot of waiting around for guidance from the state What does this summer look like? and county public health departments, not only for the end of the last school As of today, we haven’t received any year, but for the entire 2020-2021 school updated guidance about next year, but we year. There was much unknown, and that are planning on it as things will return to made it very difficult to plan. much closer to normal. We had schedules ready to go for this Schedules are being created for the fall, year, but they all had to be scrapped once winter, and spring seasons, and we hope the new dates were announced on July to be able to get going with our fall sports 20th. At that point, we created schedules in August. for the “new” seasons but had to wait to implement them until we were given ap proval.
INTERVIEW by CARSON BOHNET PHOTOS by HANNA MASRI
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