On Sunday, November 8th, Governor Herbert declared a new state of emergency in response to the recent surge of COVID-19 cases and the overcrowding of hospitals. In this state of emergency, Herbert placed a mask mandate for the entire state, limited social gatherings to only households until November 23rd (besides school), and all extracurricular activities except for high school championships and intercollegiate athletic events on hold until November 23rd.

Many students at Park City High School were looking forward to the beginning of their Winter extracurricular activities, including tryouts for Girl’s and Boy’s basketball scheduled to take place on Monday the 9th. With the new state of emergency, tryouts have been postponed until Monday, November 23rd, and will remain up in the air if there isn’t an improvement in the daily COVID-19 cases. 

Other extracurricular activities like swimming and debate have been put on hold with this announcement as well. Debate has changed its philosophy this year to reduce exposure risks by making all competitions take place over Zoom. Even with these extra cautions, their tournaments got postponed due to the orders placed by Herbert.

Many students involved in extracurricular activities remain confused as to what these orders mean with the exceptions in place with high school football allowed to finish their season. 

Junior Cutter Lapine is a member of the basketball team and feels that to remain safe it would make sense for the football season to get pushed back as well.

“I feel that if some groups must be delayed at least two weeks, then football should as well,” Lapine said.

Lapine understands that it is important to allow these players to be able to finish the season but thinks that if it is too dangerous to have other extracurricular activities go on, then football shouldn’t be an exception.

Senior Fischer Caplin is the captain of the swimming team and believes that if football got postponed, many people would get mad because of the number of people that follow football compared to other high school extracurricular activities.

“Football is generally regarded as the most cared about sport,” said Caplin. “If high school football got canceled, people would be super pissed.”

As winter extracurricular activities come to a beginning, the common aspect that remains on members’ minds is that they want their season to happen.

“It sucks that we have to wait an additional two weeks before basketball, but as long as we can play our season, I’ll be ok,” said Lapine.