Decision time: North athletes may have to choose school or club sports

Due to Covid-19, the Oshkosh Area School District (OASD) decided to postpone the fall 2020 sports seasons on Aug. 18. Later, they moved the fall season to the spring of 2021, leaving some players to make the difficult decision to choose between club teams and school teams.

“The [OASD] has made the difficult decision to postpone the fall 2020 high school sports season. In alignment with the model provided by the WIAA, we plan to hold high school fall sports in the spring of 2021. Please note that no seasons will be eliminated (winter, fall, or spring) to make room for another season. Instead, this will be a shift of seasons within an abbreviated model for all sports,” the district’s release states.

The new schedule will cause several sports’ schedules to conflict with a local club team’s schedule.

High school volleyball normally starts Monday, Aug. 13 but will now start Feb. 22, 2021. However, Valley area Impact Volleyball team can start as early as Dec. 1 and go until June 3.

Junior volleyball player Payton Uptagraph says,“I play club volleyball for the team Impact in the spring and school volleyball in the fall. Now that fall sports have been moved to the spring, Impact and school volleyball are going to clash, and I am going to have to choose between Impact or school.”

Many other volleyball players who play club volleyball, along with many other fall athletes in club sports will have to make this difficult decision as well.

Boys soccer typically begins Aug. 13 but will now start Mar. 22, 2021.

The club soccer team Oshkosh United starts mid April and goes until late June. With training and the time commitment soccer takes, it may cause students to choose their league. 

Covid-19 has already caused many challenges, and many more unforeseen one’s will surely arise during the new spring sport season start. Some of the challenges that will be faced are less players due to club sports going on at the same time, Wisconsin weather, fitting in practice time for every sport, as well as finding opposing teams to play during the same time our fall sports will begin.