For this edition, we interviewed Mark Ekren, the athletics director at Morris Area High School. The biggest impact that fall sports encountered was that none of the sports at MAHS were able to have state tournaments or championships. Volleyball ended before sections and Football ended after the first game of sections. Winter sports are different because of the new COVID guidelines, which allow two games per week, making scheduling now more complicated. The following information is current as of January 2021.
A precaution that was taken to prevent the spread of Covid-19 through sports included wearing masks while being on the bench, playing, and being active. There are exceptions for sports that can’t wear masks, for example, Wrestling (when they are in a match), Gymnastics (when they are on bars/beam and floors, to secure the stability of the athletes), and in Boys Swimming.
Since MAES and MAHS are trying their best to prevent a further spread of this virus, they have split the after school bus routes into two routes, one for in-town students and one for country students. Students taking the second route have to wait in the elementary gymnasium. The usability of the elementary gym has been a challenge for sports. Due to this, our Girls Basketball team can’t practice until about 3:45 instead of 3:30.
MAHS Boys Basketball is now very different from other years because coach Torgerson had to divide up the team into pods of twenty-five athletes, due to all the new guidelines. If a student were to get Covid, only those twenty-five athletes would have to be quarantined. The number of games has also been reduced from twenty-five games per season to eighteen games per season. Transportation for all sports has also changed; this year parents have the ability to bring their athletes to their respective events and athletes riding busses to events have to follow a seating chart.
Here are some recent sports reports: Boys Hockey recently played at St. Cloud Cathedral and lost 3-0. Girls Hockey had their first game on Tuesday, January 19th against Sauk Center, they lost 8-3. Seventh and eighth-grade girls basketball just resumed their season too and have so far lost one game and won another game.
Ekren says his hope is that the vaccine will help bring back normal sports seasons and that spring hopefully brings back state tournaments for Winter sports. The cool thing that has come out of all of this has been the daily usage of technology in ALL activities here at MAHS. And if you didn’t know already, go subscribe to Morris Area Tigers Live YouTube, where you can find all of our live events.
