Decision day near for youth football season

By Mike Wertman, Sports Writer Posted 3 July 2020 at 8:07 am

The decision on whether or not there will be a youth football program locally this season will be decided at a meeting of the Niagara Orleans Football Association (NOFA) Board of Commissioners on July 9.

Practice sessions for the NOFA season traditionally begin the last week of July but like other sports activities the league has been put on hold due to restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 Pandemic.

NOFA’s Executive Board met recently and discussed several possible options for the season and the Board of Commissioners is slated to decide on one of them at the July 9 meeting.

The options include postponing the start of practices until late August when the high school teams begin practice and then have an abbreviated season of about six games.

The options also include canceling the season.

In addition, there is an option to cancel this season and instead play it next spring from March to May.

Also involved in the board’s consideration are the many guidelines that must now be followed both involving player safety and for the hosting of a game.

“That’s where we are at right now,” said Executive Board member Geno Allport. “A best case scenario would be that we would start practice later and have a condensed season. The worst case would be we would cancel the season. And there are a lot of guidelines that would have to be followed. We will just have to see what the commissioners want to do. The main thing is as much as we love football the safety of everyone involved must come first.”