Spectator Rules Spring 2021 Cazenovia Lakers
Dear Parent(s)/Guardian(s),
Welcome to the Spring 2021 sports season; it’s been a long time coming and we are very excited to get these games and events rolling after a 1-year hiatus!
I am writing to everyone to give an update on what our spectating standards are going to be for all our home games and most of our away games. Each participant of the contest for the home and away team is allotted 2 spectators. We are going to use the “Cazenovia Laker Pride Honor System” this Spring. There will not be any spectator passes issued, and the athletic department will not station a roster attendant at our home contests. Instead, we are going to trust that each participant will designate just two spectators to represent them for the game. If everyone holds up their end of the bargain, we won’t need to address any more restrictions. Please note, I will not count elementary school aged children or younger children as “spectators”, nobody needs to get daycare to be able to go watch your student-athlete play a game if at Cazenovia CSD. This may not hold true for away games (for away games you should plan on just 2 per participant being the absolute limit unless you hear otherwise or have called that school ahead of time). If you plan to bring your young child with you to a Cazenovia CSD home game, feel free to bring them and not worry about the 2-count, but they must stay with you and not roam the property unsupervised. Most schools are planning to use an honor system like we are, but some schools are planning to check names off on a game roster with an attendant and limit the spectators in a very organized manner, especially at their stadium field setups.
I will be spot checking at every contest I go to as will our coaches. If we feel the crowd size is too large based on our roster count, I may do some questioning and ask people to leave the field area if they were the cause of the crowd being too large, meaning they purposefully exceeded the 2 per participant rule. Please note, many of our venues have longer range viewing areas that would not count as being inside the stadium, or field area. For example, if a spectator chose to bring a lawn chair and go sit on the field beyond the hill on Googin Field 1 for a lacrosse game, I would not consider you in the stadium, likewise, if a person sat up by the H.S. Baseball Field Dugout to view a track meet, I would not count you as inside the track stadium, and similarly, if a person stood or sat in the outfield beyond the homerun fence (between the foul poles) at Robert S. Dubik Baseball Field, I would not count you as a “spectator” inside the park. As you can tell, there may be ways to see the game if you were not one of the 2 designated spectators for your participant, but you may need to compromise your view of the game and sit outside of the boundary limit area and not with your friends or family.
If I learn of any dramatically different spectator rules for a venue that we travel to, I will try my best to email the parent/guardian list for a specific team to let you know those restrictions. I do know already that Oswego is only allowing home fans at 2 per participant, and that Chittenango is only allowing fans that are adults (older than being in school still). If I learn of any more restrictions, I will be sure to communicate as best as possible.
For all the games home or away, spectators must wear their masks (face coverings), socially distance, and demonstrate excellent sportsmanship. Athletic Administrators have so much to worry about with COVID, such as possible contact tracing scenarios, the weather, the shortage of umpires/officials and other limits/compliance rules the teams have to follow, that we will have very little tolerance for poor sportsmanship at any of our contests. At the time of this message there are no current exceptions to the face covering rule in sports complexes for those with vaccines or for being outdoors so we will mask up and space out until we hear otherwise and communicate this if any rules change for the schools and sporting venues.
If anyone has any questions, please reach out to me via an email (mbyrnes@caz.cnyric.org) and I will get back to you with the best answer I can come up with. Looking forward to seeing you all out at the games, and Go Lakers!
Sincerely,
Mike Byrnes
