Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

For many sports lovers like myself, the news coming from the world of administrators that control sports from the prep level to the collegiate and pro levels continues to build excitement for everyone from the athletes and coaches to the community that supports these athletes.

With the TSSAA lifting the ban on attendance requirements beginning with the prep football season, everyone is starting to talk up the upcoming season as fans will once again be able to fill the stands as bands will be playing and cheerleaders will be performing stunts and cheers in an effort of pepping up their respective teams.

Coaches no longer will have to be worried about temperature checks or filling out daily reports on their athletes or having to put players into quarantine.

As dead period approaches, many teams have been working out in conditioning and weight lifting to get prepared for the new season and once the dead period is lifted, teams will begin to dig deeper in preparing for new seasons in prep sports such as football, girl’s soccer, cross country, volleyball, golf, and cheerleading.

Aside from being able to once again sensing a feeling of normalcy, many athletic directors are looking forward to starting building their athletic budgets to allow for the purchase of needed equipment and operation of each sport supported by their respective school.

College athletics will also be returning back to pre-COVID operations as many universities such as Tennessee and Virginia Tech have announced that they will be allowing full attendance during the 2021 season.

These programs took a major hit in the 2020 season as only a percentage of capacity were allowed in with limited games as each team played schools within their own conference.

Many highly anticipated non-conference contests were canceled collegiately as the university coffers took a hard hit during the pandemic as fans that would have been tailgating outside the stadium and filling the stands had to stay at home and watch their favorite team on the television.

The current College Baseball World Series in Omaha has shown the eagerness of fans to come out and support their teams as each game has filled the stands to capacity with each team being well represented from California to Tennessee.

Professional sports are also taking advantage of the lifting of attendance bans with teams filling their stadiums with fans who are hungry not so much for the game but to just be able to sit in a seat in the stadium and take in the atmosphere that surrounds a major league contest.

Yes, excitement is growing all around and I, for one, as a sports writer and sports editor am excited about the upcoming fall season. It will be great to once again stand on the sidelines of a football game and look up to stands filled with fans as the band and cheerleaders are able to be present for home and away contests.

And win or lose – it’s going to be great to have sports back to normal without hearing someone come across the PA every 15 minutes to advise fans to wear masks and social distance.

At the printing of this article, there will be 57 days left to kickoff off the high school football season and I can hardly wait!