Central Dauphin and CD East fans are going to have to wait to see their teams play in person for football or girls volleyball home games.
The Central Dauphin School District announced on Wednesday that due to the restrictions on gathering from Gov. Tom Wolf, spectators will not be allowed to enter the stadiums or gyms for football or girls volleyball games. A release detailing the information said that the spectator numbers will only accomodate home and visiting teams, band members, cheerleaders, security, essentiall staff, district staff and media.
Spectators will be permitted at other fall sports so long as the stadium is able to keep within the limit of 25 people indoors or 250 outdoors.
The decision from the school district means that people will not be allowed to tailgate or stand outside the fences to watch the game, and that the campuses will be closed at 5:30 p.m. on game days and police will force anyone there to leave so as not to exceed the 250 capacity. The release said no vehicles will be allowed on school property.
Currently, both Central Dauphin and CD East have said they will use Pixellot for home games. The link to Central Dauphin’s page can be found here and CD East’s page can be found here.
The announcement from the school district came the same day that the Pa. House failed to override the veto from Wolf of House Bill 2787, which would allow individual schools to develop spectator policies and decide for themselves whether to have sports.
However, a federal judge had already ruled that Wolf’s lockdown and gathering limitations were unconstitutional and did not grant the governor a stay on the lockdown. While the decision is being appealed to the U.S. Third Circuit of Appeals, schools can decide at present how many spectators to allow into events, though it would revert back to 25 indoors and 250 outdoors if the circuit court grants Wolf a stay.
The PIAA Board of Directors said during Wednesday’s meeting that for now, schools can decide how many spectators to allow in for events.
Schools across the Mid-Penn Conference have come up with different responses for how to handle spectators at events. Susquehanna Township is currently not allowing fans at its home football game, according to its athletics page, while Camp Hill is allowing only families of senior football players, cheerleaders and band members to attend with only two tickets being given out per family, according to its page. Altoona, on the other hand, expanded attendance to 33% specator capacity at all fall events, its athletics account shared on Twitter.
-- Follow Ed Sutelan on Twitter, @EdwardSutelan