Winter sports season on the table at IHSA meeting today

The Illinois High School Association Board of Directors will meet in a special session today at 1pm today to discuss the upcoming winter sports season.

On October 28 the IHSA agreed to go forward with the 2020-21 basketball season starting on November 26 as originally planned in August of this year. They told their member schools and the public it was up to the individual school to allow their basketball teams to participate during the pandemic as long as programs followed the guidelines developed by the IHSA Sport Medicine Advisory Committee (SMAC).

One day later, Governor JB Pritzker put the breaks on the 2020-21 basketball season as well all other planned prep winter sports, including wrestling, dance and cheer competition. Anticipating a rise in the state's Coronavirus metrics, Governor Pritzker said those sports would have to be moved to the spring season.

"It is difficult to forecast if it will produce any official action, or (if it) will just be (a) discussion," Matt Troha, Assistant Executive Director at the IHSA wrote in an email to the media this morning. "Regardless, it is my hope to email a recap out by around 3pm."

Former Unity player earns 6th volleyball conference award

Rockets' Abby Maxwell flashes a huge smile during the Unity volleyball team's home match against Rantoul on September 29, 2016. Now a setter at Truett McConnell University in Cleveland, GA, the collegiate standout earned her sixth conference recognition award this week. (Photo: PhotoNews Media/Clark Brooks)

2017 Unity graduate Abby Maxwell was named Appalachian Athletic Conference Setter of the Week for the sixth time this season.

Now a senior at Truett McConnell University, she is the first TMU athlete has received an AAC weekly award six times in a single season.

Maxwell ranks first in total assists (485), which ranks 15th nationally, and second in most assists per set (9.9), which ranks 12th nationally. She also ranks ninth in total digs in the AAC with 197 and now holds the AAC single game high for most assists and digs in a match, 57 and 40, respectively. She has made over 1,000 digs during her collegiate career. Of the 14 matches played this season, Maxwell has recorded a double-double in all but three.

She also is 32 assists shy of reaching the 3,000th career assists mark.

In high school, Maxwell earned all-conference honors in both volleyball and basketball.