Boyer leads Eagles through wild year

There is no playbook for an athletic director to deal with a pandemic.  That much was certain for those unlucky enough to have been forced to deal with the coronavirus over the past 12 months. But when Sauk Prairie’s Josh Boyer, who serves as the school’s athletics and activities director, looks back on the past year, he has a quick quip that usually draws a knowing smile. “I tell people I deal with the two ‘C’s, COVID and construction, this year,” said Boyer, in his fifth year at Sauk Prairie after previously serving as athletics director at Fort Atkinson High School. “That’s been a lot of my time.  “I haven’t had time to reflect on it. I’m glad we got through two seasons. In a couple of years, when the construction is done and COVID is hopefully in our rearview mirror I might be bored.” That’s doubtful. However, Boyer said there was no pressure to forge ahead but there was certainly plenty of support to at least try to provide an opportunity for the school’s fall and winter sports programs. “I definitely heard from both sides,” he said. “There were some that were all for it, and there were people who said I don’t know if we should be doing this right now.  “But there was definitely overwhelming support for us finding ways to do it safely, to have our kids back in the building for instruction, but also providing those athletic and activity opportunities. There was definitely more support than there was angst against it. “I never felt intense pressure like you need to do this or it has to be done. People were just advocating for the reasons why and we always appreciate when people are advocating their beliefs and hopefully they are looking out for their son or daughter. I felt there was more support for us to find ways to offer athletics and activities.” Senior Isaac Breunig, who played football and basketball for the Eagles, represented the feelings of many of his peers who were provided the opportunity to compete. “It was great that we got to play,” Breunig said. “All last summer and fall, there was uncertainty on whether we were going to be able to play or not. It was a shortened season. But it was better than nothing. I’m glad we were able to play.”  March 13 will be forever etched in stone as the day that the world came to a stop for prep sports in Wisconsin. One month later, the Sauk Prairie community voted on April 13 to pass a $64.985 million referendum that included upgrades to numerous athletic facilities.  The 2,000-seat Sauk Prairie Community Stadium and Athletics Complex hosted football and soccer games on its turf field last fall. A brand new track will make its debut this spring and construction continues on what will eventually be a $12-million aquatics facility along with a new weight room, wrestling room and a number of athletic fields. Although the Badger Conference had competition for fall and winter sports canceled by the coronavirus, Sauk Prairie forged on. “Girls swimming and tennis were the first events we hosted and we hadn’t hosted an event since late February, early March,” Boyer said. “There was anxiousness and excitement. The kids were just great. There was a lot of media attention. It was different, there were no fans at swimming. You had to wear masks in the pool, take them off, put them on, take them off. It was all these different nuances. “But as soon as they got in the water, it was doing what they were training to do and had been doing all their lives. Most of the kids were just super thankful to have that opportunity. They saw what happened to their peers in the spring, losing a season and seeing how fast it can be taken away. They just really appreciated the opportunity they had in front of them.”   What a year  it’s been While many schools in the area didn’t begin competitions until Jan., 2021, the Eagles have been competing since August. And they’ve put on quite a show. Sophomore Jack Boerger placed 44th at the WIAA Division 1 state cross country meet making him just the second Sauk Prairie male to reach state in 11 years. The girls volleyball team reached state for the second time in program history — and the first time since 2009 — despite being moved up to Division 1. The boys soccer team ended a 23-year state tournament drought by making state for the fourth time in team history. The hockey team advanced to the Division 1 sectionals for the second year in a row, while the boys swim team, a co-op program with Wisconsin Heights, placed fourth at the Division 2 state meet. The only downside was the girls swim team’s state streak ending after they opted out of the postseason. “I have received numerous comments, feedback, thank you’s to the whole school for providing an opportunity,” Boyer said. “It’s great that the kids are getting that opportunity. I do think the vast majoring are seeing how fortunate we truly were.  “You see in Dane County where their peers, who they play club sports with, had to sit there and watch. They got the opportunity to play this fall and winter. They had a greater appreciation. We took on the challenge to find a way to make it happen and people are appreciative that we found a way and a solution instead of just saying, ‘No we’re not going to.’ ” Boyer said that extracurricular activities are a big component of the high school experience, which made at least attempting to compete a worthwhile endeavor. “They learn so much through participating in athletics and other activities,” he said. “That includes valuable skills including teamwork and dealing with adversity. This past year is hopefully the most adverse situation they’re going to have to deal with in their lives.”   In the beginning Sauk Prairie had wrapped up its winter sports when the WIAA was forced to cancel the final two days of the girls state basketball tournament along with the boys basketball sectional finals and state tournament. And when Gov. Tony Evers (D) announced the closing of schools across the state on March 13, 2020, that was a foreshadowing of what turned out to be a lost spring. “At the time, it was a ‘let’s see, maybe this will be a month or two,’ ” Boyer said. “We knew spring sports would be delayed. We were taking it day-by-day. Most of us were thinking we were going to have a (spring) season at some point. We just had no idea of the scope and breadth of what was going on until we started getting involved with it.” While there was optimism in March and April that some sort of spring season would eventually be held, there were so many unknowns, Boyer said.  “The thought of not having a season didn’t cross my mind. It didn’t cross many people’s minds right away in March. We thought the school shutdown would be a few weeks or last a month, but it ended up lasting the rest of the school year.” Sauk Prairie started welcoming students back on campus after the 4th of July in limited numbers for summer school and fall sports contact.  For open gyms, they started bringing back smaller numbers.  “We powered through some procedures to see how things would work,” he said. “When the school year started, we were in hybrid and kids had the option to be virtual the whole school year. We’ve been in hybrid since the school year started.”   Fall sports,  yes or no? Seven of the 16 schools in the Badger Conference are located in Dane County with the other nine spread across six other counties. That presented a unique challenge for the league’s athletic directors, who regularly hold monthly meetings. “In Watertown, they don’t have the same setup like Sauk or Dane has so they’ve been operating differently, for example,” Boyer said. “That provided a lot of unique conversations. “In the conference, we were holding out hope for a spring season. We held out as long as we could before we had to say we weren’t going to sponsor a conference-affiliated season.”   But as summer wore on, the possibility of a fall sports season being wiped out loomed large. “The first part of summer, we knew those schools in Dane County were nowhere near going to have that opportunity,” Boyer said. “The schools in Sauk County and the surrounding counties started to figure out what the schedules would look like, an alternative as a backup just in case we for sure had to pull the plug then we would have our schedules ready to go. “It would be a non-Badger Conference affiliated schedule with some Badger Conference schools and some others we would sprinkle in to fill out the schedule. I took the lead and built the schedule and a few others. That was a little chaotic at the end of July as we started to get closer to what would be the fall sports season.” The WIAA held two historic Board of Control meetings in late July and early August and gave the go-ahead for fall sports, as well as coming up with an alternative fall sports season for the spring for those who would be unable to compete in the fall.   “The Badger Conference continued to meet as a group even though there were some schools not doing anything or maybe some who only did a couple of sports and not others,” Boyer said. “The group that moved forward, myself, Baraboo, Reedsburg, Watertown, Edgewood, Portage, we met it seemed like a couple of times a week and we continued with it. We shared a lot of great ideas. “We problem-solved a lot of things because we were doing the same stuff. We were trying to figure this out together. When something came up, we’d try to find a solution together. If we found out something like, hey, I did this, you might want to try it, sweet. We tried to exchange ideas as much as possible because we’re all new in this and have strengths and think of things at different times. We’d find different solutions to help us out.”  As the school year approached, Sauk Prairie opted to give fall sports a try. “There were days and times like, ‘man I wish we weren’t doing this’. It was stressful,” Boyer said. “It was hard. It was something there was no playbook for. It wasn’t something that we could draw back on, in how do we deal with a pandemic in offering athletics and activities? “I didn’t have someone I could call who had done it before and say, yes, do this. We were developing policies and procedures from scratch. There was angst and some days it was, ah, man. But what gave it the excitement and the joy was knowing that we were doing what was best for kids and how can we make that happen. “Whether it was a football game or a Thursday night soccer game, Tuesday night volleyball, swimming, tennis, whatever events and seeing the kids out there participating looking like they hadn’t missed a beat.  Those were the times where you felt you could deal with a little bit of the chaos and stress. These are getting the experience they wanted to have in high school.”   Challenges  met head on Boyer said once the WIAA gave the go-ahead for fall sports it was, ‘here we go and we started’, “There were conversations at the district level, what we were planning to do,” Boyer said. “We already had welcomed kids back on back on campus. We saw how things were going at the district level, what our plans for an instructional model for the year was and received feedback from Sauk County.” Boyer added that he believed Sauk Prairie had an opportunity to make fall sports a reality albeit in a different setting. “We felt that we had the ability and the confidence in our procedures to offer fall sports during the fall sports season,” he said. “I’m very fortunate that our district was supportive of that, the school board was supportive of that and Sauk County was. I felt it was a very successful fall season in terms of how we operated. “We followed the CDC (Center for Disease Control). We followed our Sauk County Health guidelines that gave us the information needed to make those decisions. Myself and our superintendent (Jeff Wright) were the ones making the decision whether we were going to move ahead with fall sports. But our school board was kept up to speed.” A plus for Sauk Prairie was that its school board never had to vote on whether to allow athletics to take place, Boyer said.  “It was more myself and our superintendent saying yes, we are in agreement,” Boyer said. “We are having kids in person, hybrid. I feel if they are here for that, we should be able to offer athletic activities. So that’s how that started.” There were plenty of obstacles to overcome, including the lost revenue from ticket sales. “We still haven’t charged anyone to come to games with the exception of WIAA playoff games where we had to charge admission,” he said. “The enhanced cleaning supplies, the masks, the splashguards from hockey and football that you don’t budget for. Then the cost to bring those safety measures up to make it a safe environment. “But I think the biggest challenge in the fall was learning to ask when we should and we could, just working through things like being socially distanced. The actual practice and format of the games was going to be different for soccer and football. Kids have to stay six feet apart at all times. How can you really practice?” Yet the biggest challenge was that the coronavirus was such a polarizing topic.  “There are differing opinions. I respect everyone’s opinions however they feel about it and our policies,” Boyer said. “But just trying to educate people on why we are having our policies and why we are requiring facemasks for spectators and why we are doing these things was a teaching moment that we had for everyone. Sometimes people didn’t agree with them, and sometimes people did. We just had to work through those conversations.”   Communication and cooperation key components for success Boyer said it came down to gathering information from the health organizations, working with other ADs in conferences, putting together policies and procedures, getting input from the WIAA and then putting together the best comprehensive plan they could.  “Certainly, we tweaked it along the way,” he said. “We’re still learning.” Boyer admitted that if the WIAA had said ‘No, we’re not sponsoring a fall sports season’, that would have created a different conversation.  “The WIAA moving forward, our county guidelines being what they were, we supplied all of the protocols that we had in place, I talked with our superintendent and he was supportive and in favor of giving the green light for those to continue,” he said. “We went forward. “There was definitely a lot of communication, which there should be. I also appreciated him letting me gather all of the information and the autonomy that I had within my position to put things forward that are best based on what I could gather. Then when I needed input and further support and an okay, he was right there to work alongside me on that so there were no surprises for either one of us.”