CHARLESTON, W.Va.- In Governor Jim Justice’s news briefing on Wednesday, he announced that the start date of winter sports will be pushed back to March 1.
Originally, Gov. Justice postponed the start of winter sports until January 11.
Justice said with the status of the COVID-19 color-coded map, he felt the date must be pushed back.
“We are targeting March 1 now to be a start up, and I hate this like crazy, but we are going to have to move our winter sports to March 1. So that will be the start up date,” Gov. Justice said.
He didn’t go into detail about what March 1 entails regarding practices or games, but said he is hopeful that sports will be able to start this Spring.
“We’re going to defer the winter sports until March the first and hope and pray we’re off and running March the first and we’ve got a long runway in front of us from the standpoint of still a lot of time left in the school year to be able to play and have the sports with all of that and everything else. Just think of the numbers that we will have vaccinated at that time. Absolutely we are very hopeful that this thing is going to turn and we can absolutely go to where we can have sports indoors and everything,” Gov. Justice said.
Gov. Justice also said all high schools across the state will continue to use the map in regards to schooling and will offer vaccines to all teachers and staff.
“We all know our schools are the pillars of our communities and we absolutely all know that we have got to do more and more and more to make them safe. So therefore today I am also announcing that we are committing to offer vaccines to all teachers and all staff,” Gov. Justice said.
High school students will continue to use remote learning if their county remains in red, but they will go back to in-person schooling if the county is orange, gold, yellow or green.
Stay with 12 News as we continue to bring you the latest updates on high school sports.
