Fans gather last September to watch the Redmond and Crook County high school baseball teams play each other at Redmond High. 

On what would be the final day of Oregon high school sports in 2020, at basketball tournaments this past March — including the Crook County boys basketball team playing in an empty Gill Coliseum in Corvallis at the 5A state tournament — fans were excluded from watching in person before the Oregon School Activities Association suspended play.

An interesting wrinkle in bringing back high school sports, which have been shelved since the COVID-19 pandemic began 10 months ago, is how to handle spectators if and when sports return.

While local athletic directors have been discussing plans for handling fans once competition potentially resumes for fall sports on March 1, Sisters athletic director Gary Thorson aptly points out that it is tricky to have a concrete plan in place nearly two months out.

“Rules can change five times between now and then,” Thorson said.

Much of the sports world has seen the number of fans in the stands evaporate to close to zero. In the Oregon-Oregon State rivalry football game in November, the stands at Reser Stadium in Corvallis were empty in a game that is typically standing-room only. Fans were not included in the NBA bubble for its playoffs.

But after a season that saw very few, if any fans, teams are starting to allow fans back into their stadiums. The Buffalo Bills are allowing 6,772 fans per New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for their playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts on Saturday, which is more than 65,000 fewer than the 71,870 capacity at Bills Stadium.

States such as Texas, which played high school sports during the fall, had guidelines of limited capacity, six feet of social distancing and masks required in the stands.

Dave Williams, the athletic director of Bend-La Pine Schools, said that ideas are being bounced around with school ADs for plans with or without fans once competition resumes.

While no concrete plans have been in place for the past several months, there have been inklings of what spectators could expect once competition resumes.

When unofficial high school competition started during the fall in Season 1 in Central Oregon, fans were originally able to sit in the stands as long as they socially distanced themselves and wore masks. Signing in for contact tracing at the entrance gates was also required. But after those efforts were unsuccessful, spectators were excluded from being in the stands.

During 7-on-7 non-tackle football competitions, with fans unable to attend at certain schools, teams resorted to streaming the games on Facebook Live as a way to give fans a chance to watch, but the quality of the broadcasts was less than ideal.

When Crook County played its state tournament basketball game with no spectators last March, fans were able to watch that game from the National Federation of State High School Association’s Network livestream.

Redmond High is already preparing for the possibility of having to broadcast games if fans are unable to attend.

“We imagine there will still be limitations of some sort on numbers like there was in the fall,” said Redmond athletic director Doug Taylor. “We did get our Pixellot camera systems installed and plan on using those to stream competitions.”