The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) has announced that it will not hold high school sports until December.

With the COVID-19 outbreak still a problem in the nation's most populous state, nine of the ten HS sports regions in California will delay sports until December 14. The region that hasn't made that move is the Northern Section, which is not densely populated and has relatively low infection numbers.

But with schools not necessarily going to in-person instruction, in-person sports seemed counter to that plan. Football will begin practices December 14. This will be in direct competition with the traditional start of the CIF rugby season and also the SoCal Youth Rugby single-school season. As a result, we may see seasons moved, or changed drastically in Southern California high school rugby.

The SoCal HS Club season, and most of the NorCal season starts in the spring, in March, and while it will compete with soccer and lacrosse, that's normal. This probably won't have the same issues, but soccer will extend later into the spring than usual.

“I feel CIF and the section offices did the best they could with all the scenarios they were facing,” Leo Lopoz told Sports Stars Mag. Lopoz is Vice President of Athletics at De La Salle, which won the all-California single-school championship in February. He is also the commissioner of the East Bay Athletic League. “It’s not a perfect equation for any one sport. Everyone had to give up something.”

Rugby is also in the boat of having to give up something. We just don't know quite what it is yet.