The Plant City Parks and Recreation Department announced last week athletic field users will have to wait a little longer to return to play, citing the recent large jump in COVID-19 cases in Hillsborough County.
“The COVID-19 situation, especially here in Hillsborough County, is not improving to a point where we can move into a higher level of risk as laid out by the CDC,” director Jack Holland said in an email. “Following the advice of the experts from DOH and USF, it is still too risky to put our youths into full contact situations on the field. One month ago, we distributed our Return to Play document. As noted in the document… we have been stating that changes would be made to the process if the COVID-19 situation did not improve. After multiple discussions, it has been decided that we need to push our Return to Play date for practice scrimmages and competition games to August 17.”
The city is not, however, adding restrictions to conditioning practices. Teams and organizations are asked to follow CDC and DOH guidelines for social distancing and sanitation.