Landon Neal, a current senior, claps during a warm-up activity during the Trojans’ season opener against Casey County on Friday, Aug. 17, 2018.
(WCLU NEWS FILE PHOTO)
GLASGOW, Ky. – Friday evening marks the first day of high school football across the commonwealth, and athletic directors are working to manage athletic functions with rules in mind that were handed down from the Kentucky High School Athletic Association.
Warren Cunningham, Barren County High School athletic director, said those limitations are specific. The KHSAA handed down a large document with specific boundaries for fall sports.
Cunningham said the largest spectator sport for BCHS is football, which opens on Sept. 11 as the Trojans face the Monroe County Falcons at 7 p.m. But the pitfall this year is the limited operating capacity at the football stadium.
“The biggest thing with football is that we’re probably not going to have – it doesn’t look like, especially this Friday night – we’re not going to have any tickets available for someone to walk up and buy a ticket this Friday night,” Cunningham said.
The stadium capacity is reduced to 30%, which is 735 spectators. The stadium typically holds 2451 people.
“We’re trying to make sure that our players’ parents, our cheerleader parents, and our band parents – those three groups of people – making sure that they get in. And obviously that our visitors have an allotment of tickets as well,” Cunningham said. “When you look at those four groups, that takes up the biggest majority of those tickets.”
Cunningham said the student body is also considered inside the spectator count.
The BCHS gymnasium is used during volleyball games, but Cunningham said the capacity is never exceeded during those games. Likewise, soccer spectators are required to distance and limit the number of people watching to three people per player.
“Just like the football stadium and the gym, we do have a health screening that everybody goes through when they arrive,” Cunningham said. “Masks and social distancing are requirements.”
The KHSAA divided the fall sports season into three “segments,” and each allows schools to add more spectators if appropriate.
The current “segment” ends Sept. 27. The second segment is Sept. 28-Oct. 23, and the third is Oct. 24 through the end of the season.
“You have the option as the season goes along – when you get into the second segment, third segment – to increase your capacity a little bit,” Cunningham said. “That’s something we’d love to do, but we have to make sure we can manage where we’re starting at first.”