6 Montgomery County High Schools Have Now Canceled Fall Sports

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PA — In the wake of the PIAA's decision to move forward, there are now six high schools across Montgomery County which have canceled all fall sports.

Cheltenham became the third public school in the county when they made their announcement last week, shortly before the PIAA's announcement confirming the fall season. They joined both Norristown and Pottstown in opting out.

Wagner Marseille, Cheltenham's superintendent of schools, said that sports couldn't be justified in the face of the district's move to no in-person instruction.

"While athletics is an extension of our students’ curricular experience, allowing fall sports to move forward would be contradictory to our current stance of opening school in a virtual environment," he wrote in a letter to the school community. "I am not confident in our ability to mitigate the exposure and transmission of COVID-19 during interscholastic competition. With the health and safety of everyone involved at stake, I’m not willing to take that risk."

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Those three Montgomery County high schools are the only public schools in the region to make the decision to cancel thus far, outside of the Philadelphia Catholic League's 17 high schools, which canceled their season on Monday.

Several of them are in Montgomery County, including Lansdale Catholic, Bishop McDevitt, and La Salle College.

Leaders from both Faith in the Future and Office of Catholic Education deliberated the PIAA's announcement while factoring in health and safety preservations, guidelines established by the governor, Department of Health and Department of Education, and maintaining a consistent system-wide approach to decision making.

"We recognize that this news is disappointing to many of our students, families and coaches, particularly our seniors," the Archdiocese said in a statement Monday. "It saddens us greatly as well. We recognize the value of athletics as part of our educational philosophy that seeks to provide for the holistic formation of young men and women of character. This is not the scenario any of us desired. "

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Gov. Wolf altered the state's guidance weeks ago to state that no sports should be held in the state until 2021. The PIAA disagreed and asked his administration to reconsider, before announcing last Friday, in vote of 25-5, that they would organize a season for all sports in the fall. That left it up to individual districts to make a decision.

With reporting from Patch correspondent Max Bennett