Pulaski County Schools adjust sports plans to follow Gov. Northam’s orders

PULASKI COUNTY, Va – Pulaski County’s fall sports season won’t look the way the school division was hoping.

Pulaski County Public Schools planned to consider cheerleaders and band members as participants this football season; however, a newly issued executive order from Gov. Ralph Northam makes that not possible.

“We’re not asking for the moon we’re not asking to create any unsafe scenarios,” Pulaski County Superintendent Dr. Kevin Siers said.

All cheer members and band members in Pulaski County will now be considered spectators, not participants.

Northam’s amended Executive Order 72 states the following:

For sports played indoors, spectators must be limited to 25 persons per field. For sports played outdoors the total number of spectators cannot exceed any of the following (i) the lesser of 30 percent of the occupancy load of the certificate of occupancy for the venue or 250 spectators per field. Spectators must wear face coverings at all times and ten feet of physical distance must be maintained between spectators who are not Family members, as defined in section II, subsection D, paragraph 2.

Executive Order 72 (Page 11)

“We’re not talking about going to any type of near-capacity crowd we just would like for all of our student-athletes and student-musicians to be able to participate and for each of them to have two parents to come in and watch them and to be able to offer the same consideration for our visiting team,” Siers said.

School division leaders are also concerned there could be a Title IX issue at play.

“These are both activities or an athletic team that are predominantly female in their compositions so in essence what the governor is doing by this order is saying that, that these athletes, these musicians these student participants, you know, they don’t get the same consideration as the football players,” Siers said.

Siers said they will follow the governor’s guidelines.