AUSTIN, Texas — As the coronavirus continues to spread in Texas , the impact on the upcoming high school sports season is starting to be felt.


What You Need To Know

  • Classes won't meet in person until September 7

  • Sports won't start until in-person classes start

  • The UIL has yet to release any official statewide guidelines

On Tuesday, Travis County issued an order that schools could not start in-person classes until after September 7. With that order, sports and extracurricular activities can not take place until schools are able to have on-campus instruction. That wipes out the first two weeks of the scheduled high school football season and the start of the volleyball season. It also means that schools across the area that were holding on-campus workouts this week, have to hit pause again.

One of the districts impacted by this is Round Rock ISD.

“Obviously time is fast approaching when we have to make some decisions,” said RRISD Athletic Director Dwayne Weirich. “There aren’t very many decisions we have to make today and if we think through some of these issues we can come up with a best solution.”

RRISD is in a unique spot with two of its high schools, McNeil and Westwood, located in Travis County and the other three high schools, Cedar Ridge, Round Rock and Stony Point, located in Williamson County. To make things equal across the board, RRISD stopped workouts on all campuses Wednesday.

The hope is fall sports can still be played, even if they are pushed back a little bit. The UIL has yet to release any official guidelines statewide, but more and more school districts are planning to start the school year with virtual learning. That may limit the ability to play sports.

Administrators and coaches in charge of athletes are all working to find a way to play this fall and avoid another sports shutdown. But the situation changes every day and doesn’t provide many easy answers.

“A lot of questions we have as we move forward and over the next three to four weeks we’re going to have to come up with some answers to the things right now that we’re just discussing,” said Weirich.​