I received information this morning from my district that Gov. Sununu plans to announce today that the remainder of the school year will be committed to distance learning, and that it is too soon to resume in-person gatherings.

So, that leaves us with an unfinished season. However, there may be a way forward for us.

Salem, Merrimack and most recently BG have experimented with holding live matches via Zoom, which, while a bit awkward at time, is actually remarkably doable, thanks to the fact that Zoom has a “raise hand” feature built into their video chat, and then uses the participants screen to reorder participants by who raise their hand first, enabling a quiz master to see who “buzzed” in first. The breakout room functionality in Zoom also allows us to hold multiple matches on the same Zoom call.

All of this may allow us to create an environment in which we can successfully complete our season. If anyone else has experimented with any other methods, please let me know, so we can evaluate options.

Before we schedule the state finals, I would like to schedule each state finals team to play at least one “scrimmage”, or practice match against another school, in order to become accustomed to the procedures. If I could get those coaches to reach out to me, we can discuss scheduling.

We also will not be able to do our coaches meeting live, but I’m sure we can work something out with Zoom. Salem is still getting a vacation break, so then at the latest, I am going to send out a feedback survey for everyone to fill out, and then we’ll look at scheduling our coaches meeting for sometime in May. We’ll probably have an abbreviated agenda, mostly looking at 2 issues, 1) whether we’ll want to keep going with the same question provider or change, and 2) planning for next season, both goals and schedule.

These are difficult times for everyone, but we will, I hope, be able to at least complete our season, which puts us a step up on athletics, and will give closure to our seniors who have lost so much else this year.

Look forward to hearing from you!