No law tells a Long Island rec league or tournament director to cancel at a specific Air Quality Index (AQI) number, so the host sets the rule. The best public starting point is the U.S. EPA's school guidance: at "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups" take more breaks and cut intensity, at "Unhealthy" consider moving longer or harder activity indoors or rescheduling, and at "Very Unhealthy" move everything indoors or reschedule. New York's DEC and Department of Health issue an Air Quality Health Advisory for Nassau and Suffolk whenever the forecast exceeds an AQI of 100. Write down who checks the AQI, when, and what each level triggers, before the day you need it. This page is general safety-planning information, not medical advice.
Who Decides Whether the Game Is Played?
The host does. That is the league, club, school, tournament director or the town or school district that owns the field. Referees do not set air-quality policy and neither does a referee service. EmergencyRefs places officials; whether a game starts, shortens or moves indoors is a host decision, the same way field closures are in our rainout policy guide.
That matters because smoke and ozone days rarely arrive with a clean rule. Rainouts have a visible trigger: standing water. Lightning has a bright-line stop-and-wait standard, covered in our lightning and heat policy guide. Air quality is different. You cannot see ozone, smoke can look like ordinary haze at one field and thick at another, and the number that matters changes through the day. Leagues that have not decided in advance end up arguing at the fence with a parent holding a phone app that says one thing while the official, the coach and the facility manager each believe something else.
If your facility sits on town or school property, check your permit or facility-use agreement first. Parks departments and districts often keep their own authority to close a field or cancel an event, and a stricter facility rule beats a looser league rule.
What the Official Guidance Actually Says
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publishes a two-page document called Air Quality and Outdoor Activity Guidance for Schools (EPA-456/F-14-003, August 2014), used by AirNow's School Flag Program. It ties activity advice to the AQI color categories. In plain terms:
| AQI category | EPA guidance for schools and youth activity |
|---|---|
| Good | Be active outside. |
| Moderate | Good day to be active outside; unusually sensitive students could have symptoms. |
| Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | OK to be active outside, especially short activities like recess and PE. For longer activities such as athletic practice, take more breaks and do less intense activities, watch for symptoms, and make sure students with asthma follow their asthma action plans and have quick-relief medicine handy. |
| Unhealthy | For all outdoor activities, take more breaks and do less intense activities. Consider moving longer or more intense activities indoors or rescheduling them to another day or time. |
| Very Unhealthy | Move all activities indoors or reschedule them to another day. |
Two details in that document are easy to miss. First, it says there is no exact amount of time students can stay outside when air quality is unhealthy: the worse the air, the more important breaks, lower intensity and watching for symptoms become. Second, it explains why intensity matters: students breathe harder when they are active longer or harder, and more pollution enters the lungs when a person is breathing harder. Rotating players more often and reducing running are the two levers it names.
The EPA table is written for schools, so it does not give a number for a 90-minute Saturday travel-team game. For a more specific example, the New York City Department of Health publishes Outdoor Air Quality Health Recommendations Based on Air Quality Index for child care, schools and camps. For the 101 to 150 range it says short (less than one hour) and low-impact outdoor activities are OK and sensitive children should avoid strenuous and prolonged (more than one hour) outdoor activity. For 151 to 200 it says to reschedule or move indoors all strenuous and prolonged activities such as sports practice and games. For 201 to 300 it says to reschedule or move all outdoor activities indoors. That document is written for New York City programs, not for Nassau and Suffolk, so treat it as a worked example of how a health department turns the AQI into a written rule, not as a requirement that applies to your league.
Where Long Island Organizers Should Check the AQI
New York's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) splits the state into eight Air Quality Health Advisory regions, and the Long Island region is Nassau and Suffolk counties. DEC and the State Department of Health issue an advisory when DEC meteorologists predict ozone or fine particulate matter (PM2.5) will exceed an AQI of 100. DEC's own pages describe three ways to follow it:
- The daily AQI forecast at DEC's forecast and current observations page, which shows the predicted maximum AQI for each region and the observed maximum for the previous day.
- Email alerts through DEC Delivers, and the toll-free Air Quality Hotline, 1-800-535-1345.
- Real-time readings from DEC's monitoring network, plus EPA's AirNow site and app for data by ZIP code.
One caution from DEC itself: ozone AQI is an 8-hour average and particulate AQI is a 24-hour average, and DEC says hourly readings on weather apps and some websites are short-term measurements that should not be compared directly to the AQI. If a parent shows you a 160 on an app while DEC's forecast says 95, they may both be reporting correctly, just on different time scales. Pick one source in your policy and name it. Most leagues are best served by the DEC forecast for the morning decision and a named real-time source for a mid-day check during smoke events.
These Advisories Are Not Rare, and Not Only a Summer Problem
Two 2026 examples from DEC's own press releases show how it looks. On July 17, 2026, DEC and DOH issued an updated advisory for fine particulate matter tied to smoke from wildfires in Canada: Long Island was forecast to reach Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, while Western New York was forecast to reach Very Unhealthy. On August 7, 2026, they issued an advisory for ozone for Long Island and the New York City Metro region in effect from 11 a.m. through 11 p.m., and noted that people who exercise outdoors should consider limiting strenuous activity when ozone is highest, generally afternoon to early evening.
DEC also notes that New York's traditional ozone season ends with the start of October but that it publishes daily ozone and particulate forecasts year-round. A fall football, soccer or flag-football weekend is not exempt from a smoke or particulate advisory, and an indoor winter schedule does not remove the question: the EPA notes that with windows closed ozone indoors should be much lower, and that for particle pollution a properly installed and maintained filtering heating or cooling system can lower indoor levels. A gym with open doors and no filtration is a different situation from a closed building with a maintained system, so your policy for "move it inside" should say which buildings count.
Ozone Days Versus Smoke Days
The two pollutants call for different scheduling responses, and the EPA makes the distinction explicit.
- Ozone is often worse on hot, sunny afternoons and early evenings, and lower in the morning. On an ozone advisory the practical move is shifting game times earlier, which is why a 9 a.m. block can be fine when a 4 p.m. block is not.
- Particle pollution, including wildfire smoke, can be high at any time of day. Moving the start time does not fix it, and the EPA advises limiting outdoor activity when there is smoke in the air and limiting activity near idling cars and buses and busy roads, especially during rush hours.
That is the reason a good policy names the pollutant of concern, which both EPA's AirNow and DEC's advisories state, rather than only a single AQI number.
A One-Page Air Quality Policy You Can Adopt
Nothing here is a legal or medical standard. It is a structure that matches how the EPA's categories are written, so your decisions are consistent and defensible. Fill in your own trigger levels with your board, your facility owner and, if your league has one, your medical or athletic-training contact.
- Name the decision-maker and the backup. One person, by title, and one alternate. Not "the coaches."
- Name the source and the check times. For example, DEC forecast the evening before, DEC forecast again two hours before the first game, and a named real-time source at each break during a smoke event.
- Map each AQI category to an action. Using the EPA wording as the model: Moderate, normal play and let sensitive participants opt out; Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, more substitutions, longer breaks, and a lighter schedule; Unhealthy, move longer or harder games indoors or reschedule; Very Unhealthy, indoors or reschedule.
- Protect participants with asthma. The EPA asks that students with asthma follow their asthma action plans and keep quick-relief medicine handy. A league cannot decide for a family, but it can make sure a child may sit out without penalty.
- Say how families and officials are told. A single text or email thread to coaches and your referee provider, sent by the decision-maker, ends the fence-line debate.
- Decide in advance what a postponement means for the schedule. A makeup date, a forfeit exemption, or a shortened game format, so teams are not punished for an air-quality call.
Tip: Put the decision deadline in the policy. A call made the night before from the forecast costs far less, in officials' travel, family plans and field staff, than one made at the whistle.
Rescheduling Games Around a Poor-Air Day?
Tell us the new date, venue, sport and level and we'll confirm a crew or tell you honestly if we can't.
Request Officials Now →What It Means for the Referees on Your Schedule
Officials breathe hard too, because they work the whole game on their feet and on the move. A written policy should treat them as participants, not as equipment.
- Give the on-site official stop-play authority in writing. If symptoms show up in a player, a coach or the official, the crew should be able to stop the game and take it to the decision-maker. The same written-authority approach is in our incident-plan guide.
- Expect officials with asthma or other conditions to make their own call. Whether an individual should work on a poor-air day is between that person and their doctor. A good provider will tell you early rather than at the field, and will try to reassign.
- Plan for rotation. The EPA's advice to rotate players more often helps only if officials also have a reasonable break between games. Do not stack back-to-back games for the same crew on an advisory day.
Billing When an Air-Quality Call Cancels a Game
A weather or air-quality cancellation is nobody's fault, and it follows the same timing logic as our rainout and lightning guides: a call made before an official leaves home is treated as a game that never happened, and once an official is en route or on site, their time is what is being accounted for. Details for your event belong in your booking conversation, since the site cannot promise a fixed number for every situation. If you already know a makeup date, the simplest path is to move the booking rather than cancel, as described in our guide to cancelling or rescheduling a booking. A rescheduled game is a new booking, so the original crew is not automatically held.
Booking Officials When the Schedule Keeps Moving
Smoke weeks and ozone weeks push leagues into doubleheaders, indoor gym rentals and evening or morning make-up slots. That is when crews get short. If you run an indoor or filtered-air facility and need officials for rescheduled games, send the date, venue, sport and level and we will confirm a crew or tell you honestly if we cannot.
Need Officials for a Rescheduled or Indoor Game?
Send the new date, venue, sport and level. We'll confirm a crew or tell you honestly if we can't.
Book a Referee at EmergencyRefs.com →Frequently Asked Questions
No state or county rule sets one number for private leagues and tournaments. The host sets the policy. The EPA's school guidance moves from more breaks and lower intensity at Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, to considering indoors or rescheduling at Unhealthy, to indoors or rescheduling at Very Unhealthy. A school district or town may have its own stricter rule, so check your facility agreement.
New York DEC publishes a daily AQI forecast for the Long Island region, which is Nassau and Suffolk counties, and issues an Air Quality Health Advisory with the Department of Health when the forecast exceeds an AQI of 100. DEC also offers email alerts and a toll-free Air Quality Hotline at 1-800-535-1345, and EPA's AirNow provides data by ZIP code.
DEC says ozone AQI is an 8-hour average and particulate AQI is a 24-hour average, and that hourly readings on many apps are short-term measurements that should not be compared directly to the AQI. Choose one named source in your league policy and use it consistently.
In practice, yes. Ozone tends to be worse on hot sunny afternoons and early evenings and lower in the morning, so earlier game times can help. Particle pollution including smoke can be high at any hour, so moving the start time does not solve it. Check which pollutant DEC or AirNow names as the pollutant of concern.
It follows the same timing logic as a rainout: a call made before the official leaves home is treated as a game that never happened, while an official who is already en route or on site has spent their time. Confirm details for your event when you book, and move rather than cancel if you already have a makeup date.
Whether an individual should work is a personal and medical decision between that person and their doctor. Officials with asthma or other conditions should tell their provider as early as possible so a replacement can be arranged. Leagues should not penalize an official for stepping aside on an advisory day.
Sources: U.S. EPA, Air Quality and Outdoor Activity Guidance for Schools (EPA-456/F-14-003, Aug. 2014); NYC Department of Health, Outdoor Air Quality Health Recommendations Based on Air Quality Index (child care, schools, camps); NYSDEC, Air Quality Index Forecast and Current Observations; NYSDEC press releases of July 2026 and August 7, 2026; NYSDEC Air Quality Monitoring page. This page is general safety-planning information, not medical advice; follow your facility's rules and your clinicians' guidance.