For the first time in a decade, every Maryland school district is opening before Labor Day. For fall athletes at Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Walt Whitman and Walter Johnson, that means preseason tryouts are a week old and the first day of school is six days away.

MCPS classes begin Tuesday, Aug. 25, but tryouts at BCC started Wednesday, Aug. 12. Barons football, boys and girls soccer, field hockey, volleyball and flag football players reported to the stadium field that day, with cross country runners following at Candy Cane City on Saturday, Aug. 15, according to the BCC athletics website. Whitman and Walter Johnson athletes are on the same MCPS-wide preseason timeline.

The compressed calendar is a product of a statewide shift. All 24 Maryland school districts are starting before the Sept. 7 holiday this year, The Baltimore Banner reported, ending a partisan divide that began when former Gov. Larry Hogan ordered post-Labor Day starts in 2016. The General Assembly returned calendar control to individual districts in 2019, but Republican-led counties like Carroll, Harford and Worcester kept September openings until this year's unusually late holiday made that impractical.

The earlier start gives MCPS teams more regular-season practice days before opening games. Maryland high school football kicks off statewide on Friday, Sept. 4, according to USA Today's national schedule. With school in session 10 days before that opener, BCC, Whitman and WJ squads can build game-week routines under a normal academic schedule rather than summer-only conditioning.

MCPS prepared for the earlier preseason push. The district's sports medicine program ran an emergency training course at Seneca Valley High School on Aug. 10, drilling athletic trainers across all 25 MCPS high schools on emergency response before tryouts opened two days later. MCPS Director of Systemwide Athletics Jeff Sullivan oversees fall sports at all three Bethesda schools.

The tradeoff: athletes juggling travel teams, camps and family vacations had a shorter window between the end of club seasons and Aug. 12 tryouts. Football, soccer, field hockey, volleyball and cross country all open their competitive seasons the week of Sept. 4.