There was definitely a bit of confusion when LHSAA executive director Eddie Bonine said that the state had to get to Phase 4 before football season could begin just one week after he stated that the fall prep football season was on go.
“I said phase four yesterday,” Bonine said on the “Off the Bench” radio show on ESPN 104.5 in Baton Rouge. “People are losing their minds at the fact that they can’t find a phase four. I get it. At the end of the day, I could’ve said post-phase three.”
What you could take from that is a miscommunication. To be clear, phase four is strictly on the LHSAA timeline. Bonine says that they will follow the state through each phase, and that once Louisiana reaches phase three, then if numbers are still trending in the right direction, the LHSAA can give their own green light on their own phase four, which would allow contact sports like football.
“What we need is for the state to go back to doing whatever we were doing that got us out of phase one to get us into phase two that we’re in right now,” says Bonine. “It seems like we’ve been in phase two for a long time with the state. Whatever we were doing back then, we need to continue to get back to that.”
On June 26th the original Phase 2 reopening of the state order expired but Governor Jon Bel Edwards said it would stay in place for at least another 28 days due to a tremendous amount of new outbreaks of the Coronavirus around the state.