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PORT NECHES — Port Neches-Groves Independent School District released details about how it is handling spectator attendance for home football games at The Reservation this season following the University Interscholastic League mandate that stadiums only allow 50 percent capacity attendance.

PNGISD will allow general seating for season ticket holders to exclusively fill sections B, C, D, E, F and G in PNG’s stadium in order to make sure spectators can maintain 6 feet of distance between groups of no more than 10.

Athletic secretary Amanda Delcambre said PNG will not sell any general admission tickets at the gate for the 2020 football season, and only season ticket holders will be allowed in these sections on the home side.

Season ticket holders may either sit in their assigned seats or pick another area if their seats are not available.

Only every other row will be open for spectator seating, and some season ticket holders’ assigned seats may not be available.

Section A of the home side is reserved for high school students and parents of students who don’t have season tickets.

The visitor side will be available to visitor spectators. Section H will be reserved for the visiting team’s band and drill teams.

Delcambre said the UIL has told PNG all schools must reserve the visitor side for visitor seating.

“We spoke to the UIL and asked them that question and they said that everyone has to leave their visitor side for their visitors, whether there’s five fans or 500 fans,” she said. “You have to allow your visitors to sit over there and have all of that space over there just for them.”

Delcambre said PNG’s stadium has an estimated total capacity of 12,000 and says the school will aim to keep attendance below 6,000. The home and visitors sides will not be counted separately.

“The UIL says 50 percent stadium capacity,” she said. “They don’t say 50 percent on the home side and 50 percent on the visitors. I personally take that as if the home side had more than 3,000 but the visitor side has 1,000, we’re still only at 4,000.”

All spectators 10 years old or older must wear a mask.

For the Oct. 23 Bum Phillips Bowl game against Nederland at Bulldog Stadium, only high school students and the parents and families of the football team, band, Indianettes, cheerleaders, twirlers and Indian Spirit will be allowed to attend for PNG.

Delcambre said she is waiting to hear from Nederland officials how many tickets PNG will be allowed to offer.

First, students who are football players, band members, cheerers and others whom Delcambre refers to as “Friday night kids,” will be allowed to purchase a limited number of tickets to be handed out to family members, but that the students will have the ultimate say in who they give their tickets to.

“We’re saying it’s for your family, but that student will determine who their family is,” Delcambre said. “We’re not going to tell the students who they can give their tickets to. We’re just going to give them a maximum number and it’s up to them to determine who their family is.

“We want to accommodate everyone, and we want to make sure everybody that’s a supporter of those kids at least has an opportunity to get tickets. We’ll do our best with that.”

Any tickets left over will be available to PNG high school students to purchase.

“We want them to be there. This is their game,” Delcambre said. “This is their school, these are their peers and we want to make sure we can get as many high school students at that game as possible. I would say it’s pretty much certain we won’t be selling to the general public and there won’t be any tickets left that will go to just anyone.”

All tickets that were sold online during preseason sales for the PNG/Nederland game have been revoked.

Anyone who would like a refund for their Nederland game tickets or who would like season tickets refunded if not attending any games in the 2020 season can call the athletic office at 409-729-7644 or send an email to adelcambre@pngisd.org to begin the refund process.

PNG will play its first game of the 2020 season Sept. 25 against non-district opponent Memorial at The Reservation.

All PNG games will be broadcast on KCOL-FM 92.5 and all home games will be live-streamed from TexanLive.com.

Because of the fluid circumstances regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, these policies and the UIL’s guidelines are subject to change. New information will be posted at pngathletics.com.