The Minister of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries announced this morning that the OSBA is one of twenty professional and elite amateur sports leagues given permission from the Ontario Government to resume play next season under specific Return-to-Play framework.

According to the Ministry, a small number of professional and elite-amateur sport leagues and events will be able to return to play under stringent public health and safety protocols developed in consultation with the Office of the Chief Medical Officer of Health. This is in advance of the broader return to play for amateur and recreational sport that will be enabled through the Roadmap to Reopen, which will allow sport and recreation to resume in incremental steps throughout summer.

This framework provides the minimum requirements to the organizers and operators of professional and elite amateur sport leagues and events in Ontario related to the development of return-to-play plans to reduce and manage the risk of COVID-19. The minimum requirements contained in the framework outline COVID-19 infection prevention and control measures, and other public health and workplace safety measures, specific to operating these leagues and events in Ontario.

Additional details of the Return-to-Play framework for professional and elite amateur sports leagues can be found here.

The Ontario Scholastic Basketball Association’s mission is to provide elite level competition and exposure to premier high school basketball student-athletes, and in turn raise the entire basketball environment in Ontario and Canada. OSBA competition has been suspended since the OSBA Final 8 tournament in March 2020.

The Ontario Scholastic Basketball Association and Ontario Basketball thank the Ministry for recognizing the OSBA as an elite amateur league, and for developing a specific re-opening framework focused on the safe return of high-performance sport. Further detailed plans on a safe return for the 2021-22 OSBA season in the fall will be announced later this summer.

#WeBack

Contact:

Carmelo Mallia

Manager, High Performance

Ontario Basketball