The MSHSL board voted Monday to reinstate high school football and volleyball for fall. Volleyball got a 14-4 vote in favor of moving their seasons back to the fall and football received a 15-3 favorable vote.

The MSHSL Board of Directors had originally voted Aug. 4 to move volleyball and football to a spring start date in an ef-fort to combat the spread of COVID-19. The proximity of athletes and a greater amount of physical contact in football particularly was behind the vote.

The MSHSL sent a sur-vey to its member schools across the state to see if each school is comfortable with football and volleyball in the fall. The MSHSL released the results on Monday with 80 percent of schools wanting football in the fall and 76 percent of schools wanting volleyball in the fall.

Board members opened Monday’s meeting by listening to Dawn Gillman from “Let Them Play,” an organization that has been outspoken about rescinding the decision to move foot-ball and volleyball. Becker and Big Lake also had some advocates with the organization — showing up at the governor’s residence a week ago to voice their opinions.

Gillman told the board that she spoke with the governor’s office and confirmed that there have been no deaths or hospitalizations due to sporting events, and told them 33 states are successfully playing foot-ball this fall.

Gillman asked the MSHSL board to allow out-door seating and standing at high school football games and in the gym for volleyball, all while honoring social distancing policies. She said her organization is urging that athletes not be forced to wear facemasks while competing, adding that those on the sidelines can.

Board member Dr. Bill Roberts maintains that the concern is mainly that ath-letes in those two sports are face to face breathing hard, and said that is the biggest worry for transmission of the virus.

Roberts also noted that coronavirus attacks the heart, and some patients have suffered heart dam-age. He explained that 26 players in the Ohio State football program were in-fected, and some are deal-ing with mild carditis.

States surrounding Minnesota are all currently playing high school foot-ball. There have been some games canceled, like Val-ley City, North Dakota’s opener. But no widespread problems.

According to the Min-nesota Department of Health, sports have led to COVID-19 outbreaks in the state.

“We’ve had 62 out-breaks or clusters. Fifteen have been associated with basketball, nine with soc-cer, nine with hockey, nine with football. Six with volleyball,” said Kris Ehres-mann, infectious disease director at MDH.

Football season is set to begin on September 28th in preparation for a six game regular season to begin on October 9th or 10th.  The postseason will likely be localized with no traditional state tournament. More information on the postseason will be decided on October 1st at the next board meeting.

The volleyball season will begin on September 28th with practices, will allow for 11 weeks of matches and up to 14 matches per team. There will be no in-season tour-naments allowed.

There will be two weeks of practices, seven weeks of regular season matches and two weeks for the postseason. As of now, spectators will not be al-lowed to attend matches in person.