Family Members Will be Allowed at Early-season West Virginia Prep Football Games

Late last week the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission announced its recommendations for attendance at extracurricular activities, and with those came good news for parents hoping to see their children play sports in the Mountain State this fall.

In football, that means for the first two weeks of the season family members will be allowed to attend games provided their county’s coronavirus numbers do not exceed certain limits.

As schools prepare to reopen around West Virginia, the state’s department of education has established a color-coded metric for deciding if students can return to classrooms on a county by county basis. Red means no in-person school, while orange, yellow and green have varying degrees of attendance limitations. Those same color codes also apply to athletics. Red means no practice or games. Orange allows for practices but no games. Yellow or green means games are on, but also with attendance limitations. The current map is below:

Going by the current map, Logan County is the only county in the state not allowed to practice. Lincoln, Mercer and Monroe counties are orange, which means schools in those counties have been allowed to practice but without an improvement will not be allowed to play games.

Parents and guardians are allowed to attend games in yellow counties, while household members will also be allowed at games in green counties. Attendance guidelines will be reevaluated by the WVSSAC after two weeks.

The WVSSAC also released social distancing and mask recommendations for those that are able to attend early-season fall athletic contests.

Prep football games are scheduled to begin around West Virginia the first week of September.