Riverbank High School sports teams have been able to begin an abbreviated season with competition starting last week. It’s scheduled to conclude by March 28 and is considered Season 1, with Season 2 starting a little later and running through the end of the school year.
The Season 1 sports for Riverbank include co-ed cross country, boys and girls golf, and co-ed tennis.
RHS cross country ran at Diablo Grande, in the foothills west of Patterson on Saturday, March 6 and are set to run again Thursday, March 11 at River Bluff in Ceres.
This week, RHS tennis was set to play Orestimba High School on Tuesday, after The News went to press, and Waterford on Thursday. Both will be on the home courts. They played at Hughson last week.
Coach Bruce Edwards reports that the RHS tennis squad will host its annual doubles tournament on Friday, March 26.
Both boys and girls golf matches last week were scheduled to be played on the Jack Tone Road Course in Ripon. Both teams were to play at the River Oaks course in Ceres this week, on Monday.
Scores have not been reported on most competitions, with some coaches regarding them as simply scrimmages because there are no playoffs this season.
About the next scheduled season, cross country coach Monte Wood has said that track can begin on April 19. He said that softball and baseball might start sometime in March if Stanislaus County can make it into the red tier of the state’s COVID classification hierarchy.
And officials said that football for the Bruins can begin if the school is able to move to the orange tier, but didn’t think that was likely. And basketball probably is out of the question as well, since they both involve close contact between players. He said basketball starting up is tied to making the yellow tier.
Varsity football coach Anthony Buich isn’t sure, either, that there’s going to be a football season for the Bruins this year.
“We don’t feel strongly that there can even be a season in the spring,” Buich said.
If there can be a season, it would be just a few games, less than a half dozen, starting later in March.
“The issue we see is the timeline to get the kids prepared properly in order to keep them safe,” Buich said. “Typically we have summer workouts and gradually add more and more equipment until they are ‘cleared’ for hitting. There just isn’t enough time to accomplish this.”
He’s hoping they’ll be able to find a way to “teach these kids football,” in an effort to keep the program alive.
