The return of sports is one step closer to happening in Pennsylvania.
Gov. Tom Wolf released guidance on how amateur, high school, collegiate, and professional sports can operate amid the coronavirus pandemic. It allows for sports-related activities in all counties in the green phase of the state’s reopening plan as well as permitting certain levels of sports to take place in the yellow phases.
The guidance says that all professional, collegiate, and high school athletics can return in the yellow phase, but noted that recreational sports can only return in the green phase.
Half of the state is already in the green phase, while 12 more counties, including Cumberland, will join them this Friday. Places like Dauphin, Lancaster, and Philadelphia counties, among others, continue to be in the yellow phase, however.
Along with providing specific requirements pertaining to the different levels, the release provided broad guidance that has to be followed in all sports. Participants will have to limit physical contact, including shaking hands, fist pumps and high fives, and shared water coolers will not be permitted. Chewing gum, eating sunflower seeds, spitting and licking fingers will also not be allowed.
