Saranac Lake Placid hockey players Jon Kratts (8) and Nick Munn celebrate a goal during their team’s victory over Beekmantown at the Saranac Lake Civic Center on Feb. 29, 2020. (Enterprise photo — Lou Reuter

SARANAC LAKE — Basketball and hockey seasons that looked like they may not happen now appear to be drawing nearer for the high school teams from Saranac Lake and Lake Placid.

The boys and girls basketball teams at both schools are scheduled to begin practicing on Monday. So are the ice hockey squads, which are combined between the two schools.

Hockey has proved to be trickier because the boys and girls play on combined teams consisting of student-athletes from different school districts located in two different counties. Lake Placid is located in Essex County and the Saranac Lake school district lies mainly in Franklin County, and both counties have some different COVID-19 regulations for allowing high-risk sports to proceed.

The Saranac Lake Placid hockey teams faced another obstacle, too: They didn’t have a home rink for practice or possible games. During recent seasons, the two home rinks for the teams have been the Saranac Lake Civic Center and the Olympic Center in Lake Placid, but neither venue will be available for use. The Saranac Lake Civic Center never opened this winter, and there will be no ice down on any of the Olympic Center’s three rinks starting next week due to the replacement of the refrigeration system.

But it looks like the Tupper Lake Central School District has stepped in to help by providing ice time for practices at the civic center in that village.

Despite the challenges, athletic directors from both school districts are optimistic that a shortened winter season stretching through the month of March will take place.

“There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle, but we’ll get it done,” Lake Placid Director of Athletics John Burdick said. “The are some challenges still in front of us, but hopefully we can make this happen and give them a few games in the later half of March and call it a lucky season that a not a lot of people expected to happen.”

Just being able to get to the stage of scheduling practices required approvals from the state level down. A go-ahead from Gov. Andrew Coumo came first, and later, the health departments from Essex and Franklin counties approved high-risk sports. Both school boards also have to give their nods to move forward. Lake Placid’s board approved high-risk sports to take place by a 5-1 vote at its monthly meeting on Feb. 16. Saranac Lake’s school board is expected to discuss high-risk sports when it meets this evening.

“I am so excited our kids will have the opportunity to move their bodies, get a chance to compete and get back that camaraderie of being part of a team,” said Eric Bennett, Saranac Lake’s director of athletics.

Saranac Lake will field both varsity boys and girls basketball teams. Bennett expects practices to run through the first two weeks of March with games taking place during the second half of the month. He said the varsity squads are planning to play seven-game slates while junior varsity teams are preparing to play five contests. Bennett added that however many hockey games the boys and girls teams play, those contests are all expected to be played in Plattsburgh.

Saranac Lake has some added hoops to get through before starting high-risk winter sports. As per Franklin County regulations, all Red Storm athletes will be required to receive COVID-19 tests prior to starting their seasons. Bennett said that has been scheduled for today. Saranac Lake’s athletes will first take a pool test, preferably with 12 per group. If any of those results come back positive, those samples will be retested to find out who is positive on an individual basis.

Saranac Lake is also required to retest 20% of its high-risk sports student-athletes on a weekly basis as long as the season lasts.

Essex County does not require any testing prior to the start of the season for student-athletes in its districts.

Only varsity teams at Lake Placid will have basketball seasons this winter.

“There’s a lot going into this,” Burdick said. “The biggest thing is even though it’s going to be a short season, we just wanted to give this experience to those who are running out of time, especially the seniors.”

Both schools have been participating in Nordic and alpine skiing this winter. Unlike hockey and basketball, those are deemed by the state to be lower-risk sports.