Photo by Craig Amoss
While most of Maryland's public and private school systems are awaiting, at the very earliest, the December 7th return date for sports, a handful of systems have re-started the fall sports season. Two of those systems, Washington County Public Schools and the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association (governing private schools around the Baltimore area) have planned cross country championships to be contested later in the season.
Schools in both systems have been contesting intra-league dual and tri meets for the past few weeks, and now both have planned county or conference championships that will serve as the culmination for an abbreviated and unprecedented cross country season.
The MIAA will contest its championship race on Saturday, November 21st at Oregon Ridge Park in Cockeysville. Not every school has opted to compete this fall season, and as of November 7th the schools listed on the conference's homepage as attending the championship meet are:
- Archbishop Curley
- Calvert Hall
- Gilman
- Loyola-Blakefield
- Mount St. Joseph
The Calvert Hall boys are defending champions in the A conference.
Meanwhile, Washington County has scheduled its annual county championship meet to be held two weeks later on Saturday, December 5th at South Hagerstown High School. All six of the county's schools with an active program have competed so far this season:
- Boonsboro
- Clear Spring
- North Hagerstown
- Smithsburg
- South Hagerstown
- Williamsport
As of November 7th, the IAAM (the female counterpart to the MIAA) has not contested any intra-league meets and does not have a championship race scheduled.
The MPSSAA has strongly encouraged local sports systems to opt into the December 7th return to sports plan, which would have winter sports practices beginning on December 7th and competition beginning in January. The fate of the indoor track season in Maryland, however, has yet to be decided, as it remains to be seen which school systems decide to opt in and if indoor track venues will even be available by the beginning of 2021 given the recent rise once again in COVID-19 cases around the state.