San Jose schools will play basketball, volleyball seasons outdoors amid COVID-19

Student-athletes at six San Jose Unified high schools are taking their ball and going outside.

With the district not providing the mandatory testing for indoor play and Santa Clara County stuck in the orange reopening tier, there was no other choice, said Pioneer athletic director and boys’ basketball coach Joe Berticevic, who helped organize a three-week round-robin season in boys’ and girls’ basketball and boys’ volleyball, with the first contests starting Tuesday, May 4, at Saratoga High’s outdoor sport courts.

“Hopefully it’s not too windy,” Berticevic said with a chuckle. “Instead of just hoping, we took it in our hands. … With boys’ volleyball and boys’ and girls’ basketball being able to play, knowing that for us in San Jose Unified, that was looking bleak … Portable scoreboard, referees — it’s going to be as close as possible to being inside.”

Six days a week from May 4 to May 22, the two outdoor courts at Saratoga will be booked by the San Jose high schools. Berticevic said he has a friendly relationship with Saratoga athletic director Tim Lugo, who previously spent time at Pioneer, and that the agreement came together quickly. Berticevic said Saratoga waived the majority of the fees associated with using the courts and that all five other SJUSD athletic directors were on board.

Most schools have either found a way to provide testing to offer indoor sports, which demands negative results within 48 hours of competition, or opted out entirely. In January, the Oakland Section floated the idea of playing outdoors, but the San Jose Unified schools are believed to be the first in the Bay Area to formalize an outdoor season amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

All six SJUSD high schools will play a double-round robin schedule with 10 games apiece in boys’ basketball and volleyball; however, only Leland, Willow Glenn and Leigh high schools plan to offer girls’ basketball; those schools will play a six-game triple-round robin schedule.

Willow Glenn and Pioneer will square off in boys volleyball Tuesday at 4 p.m. in the first official outdoor match. At 6 p.m., the courts will host two more concurrent boys’ volleyball matches.

The first basketball games will take place the following day, with Pioneer playing Gunderson on the same pavement as San Jose and Leland, just one court over.

Only essential personnel will be allowed to attend, Berticevic said, but the schools plan to stream the games and post video on Hudl.

The plans only came together in the last week, Berticevic said, when it became clear Santa Clara County wouldn’t advance into the yellow reopening tier, which would have allowed the schools to play indoors without arranging the testing regimen.

At the end of March, San Jose Unified made the decision not to pursue testing for student-athletes, which at the time dealt a fatal blow to the girls’ volleyball season and cast doubt about indoor sports with later start dates.

Berticevic said he watched carefully as Santa Clara County’s case rate kept falling, but then it stalled.

“We’re thinking, ‘Oh, maybe there’s a chance we get to yellow and we’ll just miss the first week of play’ … Gradually it gets to the end of April and numbers are going up a little bit,” Berticevic said. “So a week ago … I’m thinking, ‘Man, we’ve got to do something if we’re going to get any games in for these kids.’ That’s when I thought, ‘Where’s an outside court that will do?’ and that’s when I thought about Saratoga.”

Within 48 hours, he said, there was an agreement in place for the SJUSD schools to use the two tree-lined courts at Saratoga for the first three weeks of May.