With the fate of a fall high school foot­ball sea­son in Col­orado trend­ing toward a return to autumn, coach­es are upset with the con­fu­sion sur­round­ing the issue this past week.

CHSAA com­mis­sion­er Rhon­da Blan­ford-Green was sched­uled to meet with Gov. Jared Polis’ office Fri­day to dis­cuss par­tic­i­pa­tion vari­ances that would allow for foot­ball and oth­er fall sports, such as vol­ley­ball and soc­cer, to be restored to their tra­di­tion­al sea­sons this year By 6 p.m., the two sides emerged with tweets indi­cat­ing those sports may be played this autumn, after all.

“We are cur­rent­ly work­ing with @CHSAA to approve vari­ances for foot­ball and field hock­ey, and we will work togeth­er to devel­op guide­lines or vari­ances for addi­tion­al sports at a lat­er date and indoor sports when they can safe­ly be played,” a tweet from Gov. Polis’ Twit­ter account read.

CHSAA tweet­ed that it was resub­mit­ting vari­ances and plans to the governor’s COVID-19 Response Team to recon­sid­er sea­sons for foot­ball, spir­it and vol­ley­ball, and will do the same for field hock­ey, gym­nas­tics, soc­cer and uni­fied bowl­ing. No oth­er details were made avail­able, includ­ing poten­tial start dates or what those sea­sons might look like.

Addi­tion­al­ly, sur­veys went out Fri­day after­noon to foot­ball coach­es in Cher­ry Creek and Jef­f­co school dis­tricts ask­ing about their program’s readi­ness for a fall sea­son, but CHSAA did not send the sur­veys. They were, accord­ing to var­i­ous coach­es who received them, sent from their respec­tive dis­trict ath­let­ic director.

All the while, Gov. Polis pro­claimed again Fri­day that there’s “a win­dow still open for the addi­tion­al fall sports” and that his office is “doing every­thing we can to facil­i­tate” a fall foot­ball season.

One local Class 5A coach called the whole sit­u­a­tion “embar­rass­ing for Col­orado.” Anoth­er labeled it a bungling of “extra­or­di­nary proportions.”

Amid the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, CHSAA orig­i­nal­ly pushed the sport to spring on Aug. 4, only to have Polis declare on Tues­day that the state want­ed to work with the asso­ci­a­tion to make a fall foot­ball sea­son hap­pen. But on Tues­day evening, the CHSAA Board of Direc­tors unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to not recon­sid­er any adjust­ment to the 2020–21 sports cal­en­dar, thus keep­ing foot­ball in the spring. One major fac­tor in that deci­sion was direct­ly pri­or to the vote, Blan­ford-Green was told Gov. Polis wasn’t will­ing to increase the 25-per­son vari­ance (or 12.5 peo­ple per side­line) nec­es­sary for a fea­si­ble foot­ball season.

The next day, Gov. Polis con­tra­dict­ed that, tweet­ing that he “encour­aged (CHSAA) to add fall foot­ball sea­son, of course (with a) vari­ance for up to 50 play­ers on each team on side­lines and every­thing else nec­es­sary for safe play.”

What­ev­er the case, local coach­es are fed up. 

“I find it hard to believe that the night before (Gov. Polis said the vari­ance was 50), the board didn’t know that,” Mullen coach Jere­my Ben­nett said. “Either the board isn’t telling 100 per­cent the truth, or the Governor’s not, or more impor­tant­ly — no one is communicating.”

With CHSAA’s lat­est announce­ment about Blanford-Green’s meet­ing with the governor’s office on Fri­day, Ben­nett said the asso­ci­a­tion “put the car­rot back on the string and hung it out the win­dow again.”

“Just like we build trust and rela­tion­ships with our play­ers, there’s no trust right now between play­ers (and CHSAA’s deci­sions),” Ben­nett said. “My kids are hurt­ing. You build these kids’ hopes up, and then it’s up to us to pick up the pieces again when the rug gets pulled out from under them… That’s not fair to do to kids.”

Fri­day also fea­tured three in-per­son protests put on by Let Col­orado Play, and some ath­letes are con­sid­er­ing fil­ing law­suits against CHSAA and Gov. Polis. 

Amid all the uncer­tain­ty, Chat­field coach Bret McGatlin is try­ing to make sure his play­ers “find some­thing pos­i­tive in all of this,” whether the result of the chaos is a short­ened spring sea­son or per­haps an even short­er fall one.

“That’s all I can do at this point — I have to make sure I’m a role mod­el for how I want them to respond to adver­si­ty in their own lives,” McGatlin said. “The sec­ond us coach­es get down, that’s bad news for the kids. They’re deal­ing with enough and we have to be there to pick them up.”