Illinois, and most other states, are still a couple of months away from the re-emergence of high school sports from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Soon enough, as high school football teams take the field and volleyball teams take the court and cross country teams try to figure out how to socially distance in the starting chute, the effect of the pandemic and the things that officials will have to do to keep student athletes, coaches, officials and fans safe will be on display.

For a sneak peek at what high school sports in a time of COVID can look like, though, one has only to cross the Mississippi River, where the high school baseball and softball seasons are in full swing in Iowa.

"We're kind of the guinea pigs for the country here," Dubuque Senior High School Athletic Director Brent Cook said. "I know everybody's watching what's going on here. Overall, it seems to be going OK."

But Tom Keating, executive director of the Iowa High School Athletic Association, doesn't want to think of Iowa as the guinea pigs. He prefers to think of this summer as a great opportunity.

"We feel part of it is just timing," Keating said. "We're the only state that does summer baseball and softball, so conditions got to the point by the time we were into that season that our governor and our Department of Ed felt that we could put some things in place to do that safely."

If the summer season can serve as a guide for how to make it safely through the fall season, the first big lesson Iowa has learned in baseball and softball is that teams need to implement safety procedures and stick to them.

"I think if folks are abiding by those guidelines, our coaches, our administrators, our athletes and the fans, we think that will bode well for the fall," Keating said. "If we don't see that and it looks like folks are being risky – and we're not really seeing that right now – but if we were, we would be a little hesitant."

For baseball and softball this summer, those guidelines include each team having its own set of balls to use when they are in the field.

If there's a foul ball, the team at bat isn't allowed to send someone to track it down. All of the players use their own water bottles, bats and gloves, with no sharing of equipment. Dugouts have been extended along the foul lines to allow players to keep social distancing on the bench. High-fives happen only with batting gloves on. Postgame handshake lines have had to take the summer off. Games in Iowa are being played this summer with no batboys or stat keepers.

"Those little things, I think coaches have done a great job with," Keating said.

Another issue is just getting to the games, where the IHSAA is deferring to the state department of education, because figuring out how to keep social distance on a bus goes beyond sports; it's something schools will have to figure out once classes resume.

There are a couple of options. One is having one student per seat and no one directly in front of or behind or next to them, which limits schools to 11 people per bus. Another is to pack in as many people on a bus as usual, but have them all wearing masks.

"We’ve got two buses to away games with 8 or 10 kids on each bus, but it is what it is," said Brian Mitchell, the varsity baseball coach at City High in Iowa City.

In Dubuque, the district bought washable masks for all of the summer athletes to wear on the bus. There is also the option for a player to catch a ride to a game with their parents.

"To be honest, most teams are having parents transport the kids," Keating said. "The schools can provide transportation for those who cannot arrange that."

Even when it comes to practices, coaches are separating players into pods to do drills.

“Early on especially, the practices we’re supposed to stay out of the dugout, that sort of thing," Mitchell said. "The temperature testing and those sorts of things are new too. It’s a new process, but we’ve been very clear with the players that if we don’t do things well and we don’t do things right, we’ll have to stop playing. "

And some teams have had to press pause on the season. A positive test of someone a player has come into contact with can result in a team having to quarantine or put a stop to a season all together. Dubuque Wahlert Catholic put its season on hold for a couple of weeks in late June. Cedar Falls shut things down for baseball and softball for the rest of the regular season at the end of June, but might return for the state tournament. West Dubuque baseball shut things down entirely on July 1.

"We're trying to do the best we can to limit exposure, but it's hard to do," Cook said.

If a player records a temperature higher than 100.3, he cannot take the field and the school has to report it.

For fans, there is the option in baseball and softball to spread out more, sitting along the outfield fence instead of packing in behind the plate.

"They did not put much limit on fan attendance, other than when they show up they need to be socially distant," Cook said. "However, our conference, the Mississippi Valley Conference, went a bit further to limit our attendance to three spectators per athlete or coach. Sophomore or JV conference schedule we limited to the same number."

For some schools, that limit is two, largely because they might have scheduled a baseball and softball game at the same time and the fields are adjacent.

At Dubuque Senior, there are constant announcements to remind fans to keep social distancing, but it can sometimes be hard to police, especially with no fence separating the parking lot from where fans would sit, which limits the administration's ability to limit fans.

"I can say without too much hesitation that's not followed very well, at least at my games," Cook said. "People start out as being apart from each other, but then grandpa and grandma come and they sit with their family who may not be in their household."

Different conferences are taking different approaches across Iowa this summer. Cook said that the MAC, the conference that includes Clinton and schools on the Iowa side of the Quad Cities, is only playing varsity-level baseball and softball this summer.

Due to the pandemic, the season actually got off to a bit later start than usual and teams got about a week less of practice. Last year, Dubuque Senior opened its baseball and softball seasons May 20. This year opening day was June 16.

“I think our governor [Kim Reynolds] absolutely wanted it to happen, and that’s where it all started," Mitchell said. "And I think it actually happened faster than anybody thought it would, from what we were hearing up to the point where they made the decision to play. So it really was 0 to 60 overnight. We really thought we probably had another 2 weeks of waiting, just based on dates that we were hearing. It was completely hectic, and we were scrambling; there are so many little things you have to do to get the season started – like getting uniforms and putting together rosters – and they were all put on hold and delayed. But for the most part, once we got word we were playing, we were prepared and ready to go."

Right now, it's just Iowa going through the experiment of playing high school sports in a pandemic. By the end of August, other states jump into the mix with football, volleyball, cross country, soccer and other sports.

In Iowa, conversations have already started on how football is going to go forward. There is talk of the ball coming off the field whenever possible to be sanitized and have the players spread out more on the sideline, standing between the 10-yard lines on each side instead of between the 25-yard lines.

In volleyball, there are already multiple balls used, so it won't be too much trouble to sanitize them.

"We didn't want to have those sports have fundamentally altered rules," Cook said. "I think some youth baseball [leagues] that were starting in May in other parts of the country were talking about no one can lead off first base or you can't steal or things like that. Our association said we're not doing that. If we can't play the sport as it's intended, we're not going to play."

Other states will soon have to figure out the things Iowa is working through now. But for now, Iowa's high school baseball and softball players are getting something their counterparts in other states aren't getting: a season.

“I don’t think they appreciate that as much as had they been outside looking in," Mitchell said. "There was a delay for them, but things have kind of come back to normal in a lot of ways, so I don’t know that they have an appreciation completely for what other kids have gone through by not having that senior season. But we’ve had our moments where, ‘Hey, this is serious, somebody at work was tested,’ and this and that, so we’ve had those scares, too."