It’s offi­cial: The boys of fall are back.

Gov. Jared Polis announced on Wednes­day after­noon that the state con­di­tion­al­ly approved revised guide­lines that would allow for select out­door prep sports to start in autumn after the Col­orado High School Activ­i­ties Asso­ci­a­tion had ini­tial­ly post­poned play until spring.

CHSAA’s Board of Direc­tors met Wednes­day night and vot­ed 12–3 in favor of allow­ing fall sea­sons for foot­ball, field hock­ey and side­line spir­it teams. Schools will still have the option of play­ing in the spring, but can­not com­pete in both sea­sons, accord­ing to a news release. CHSAA has not yet pro­vid­ed a time­line for when autumn prac­tices or games will start.

The rever­sal comes after CHSAA resub­mit­ted “mod­i­fied safe­ty imple­men­ta­tion plans and vari­ance requests” to that state that raised lim­its on the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants. Specif­i­cal­ly, it allows groups of up to 50 play­ers (exclud­ing coaches/officials/staff) per ros­ter on a field at one time.

“We have worked close­ly with CHSAA to approve their request, issue guide­lines and assist in cre­at­ing a process that sup­ports a return to foot­ball, field hock­ey and cheer,” Polis said in a news release. “If the CHSAA board decides to add these sports to their fall cal­en­dars, it will be up to local school dis­tricts, admin­is­tra­tors and par­ents to choose what is right for their com­mu­ni­ties. The state has approved these requests in order to empow­er all schools to make the choice that is right for them and their stu­dent athletes.”

How­ev­er, there is a clear dis­cord between local com­mu­ni­ties over the deci­sion of when to play high school football.

Declin­ing coro­n­avirus cas­es in the state (plus sig­nif­i­cant lob­by­ing efforts from schools, par­ents and play­ers) led Polis to recon­sid­er a fall prep sports sea­son. CHSAA ini­tial­ly vot­ed against it and the back-and-forth process frus­trat­ed many promi­nent coach­es. Den­ver Pub­lic Schools announced in a news release that it prefers CHSAA’s ini­tial deci­sion to start foot­ball prac­tices in Feb­ru­ary and games in March.

“We feel the deci­sion to move for­ward with CHSAA sports as sched­uled, after the win­ter break, gives us the best and safest oppor­tu­ni­ty for our stu­dents to have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate this school year,” DPS said in a state­ment. “Cur­rent­ly in Den­ver, we are under guid­ance from our local health depart­ments that lim­it cohort size and adult inter­ac­tion with cohorts. This guid­ance alone would make it impos­si­ble to offer the same pro­gram­ming allowed in neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ties. It could also lim­it par­tic­i­pa­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties for our stu­dents. Addi­tion­al­ly, the lack of a sol­id and cohe­sive plan from CHSAA that out­lines the expec­ta­tions and require­ments for the roll­out of foot­ball makes it very dif­fi­cult to make addi­tion­al com­mit­ments at this time. This is because we are unable to assess whether par­tic­i­pa­tion would be fea­si­ble, what con­di­tions would be required and any impli­ca­tions giv­en our local health context.”