This Friday night, football players will take to the gridiron for the first game of the season. Corvallis will travel to Stevensville to battle the Yellowjackets. Volleyball will feature Stevensville hosting Florence and Hamilton hosting Dillon. There will be a cross country meet in Corvallis on Friday.
All of the teams in the valley have been practicing for the past two weeks under COVID-19 protocol set down by the Montana High School Association. This includes each athlete bringing their own water bottle and towel. For football, the players still need to social distance when not on the field. Pods of players have been working out together to limit their exposure. If they need to practice against other players outside of their pod, the coaches need to make the switch the following day. In volleyball, the players will not switch benches at the end of a game.
Sanitation is a must! The ball should be cleaned and sanitized throughout the practices or the game. This applies to football and volleyball. Players are required to wear masks while on the sidelines. They may also wear gloves while playing, especially football. Masks are a must for coaches and officials, as well as the crowd.
Stevensville’s plan for football includes restricted seating for the home crowd and the visitors. Visitors will be on the east side of the field and may enter from ALC Way off of Middle Burnt Fork Road (at Pantry Partners). There will be a ticket booth there. The home crowd may sit in the bleachers and socially distance, or stand along the fence, again socially distancing and wearing masks. There will be no pep band or concessions. When the game is over, fans will be delayed until the teams exit the field with the visiting team boarding their bus and leaving.
When Corvallis has a home football game, they will also have two ticket booths. Visitors will enter through the North ticket gate while home fans will enter through the West ticket gate. Visiting fans can park along the north fence or in the soccer parking lot. Visitors will be restricted to their own bleachers and sidelines for the entire game. The bleachers will be marked off to encourage socially distancing. The students in the student section will be required to wear a mask throughout the game.
For soccer, the Corvallis home crowd will be seated on the north end of the field and the visitors on the south end. Masks are required if not socially distancing. Stevensville soccer fans must socially distance and wear masks if they are not. Again, no concessions will be sold.
Fans will be allowed to watch volleyball at both schools. In Corvallis, the visitors will sit behind their team and are encouraged to only stay for their student’s game. Stevensville’s fans will have similar guidelines.
Both Chance Edman, Stevensville’s activities director, and Tyson Tucker, Corvallis’ activities director, stressed that these guidelines for spectators are subject to change and will change as the COVID-19 pandemic changes here in Montana.
Scott Stiegler, the activities director at Florence, said that two tickets per player and one ticket per coach would be issued for both volleyball and football. He said that the Western B Division voted to have no visiting fans for either football or volleyball. Florence is looking at ways to prepackage food so they may have a concession stand. The school is not selling family activity passes this year in hopes that families would then spend that money to subscribe to the NFHS where all the games will be streamed. Games will also be streamed for Corvallis and Stevensville.
According to Travis Blome, activities director at Hamilton, the plans for fans have not been finalized as of press time.