Preps on pause questions: Will sports resume? Does the CIF care? What about clubs?
It’s a tired theme now, a physical void without fun and games, a continuous emotional kick to the gut for those on pause.
And swirling through a lot of heads: more questions and concerns than concrete answers.
High school sports in California remain in a holding pattern due to an invisible virus that has shuttered schools and businesses. It spreads through droplets in the air, through talking, yelling or cheering. It is highly contagious. Efforts to keep people away from gatherings large and small have reaped mixed results.
COVID-19 surges have left the majority of the state in the most-restrictive purple tier, the color-coded plan to get California back on its feet and in full motion again. It’s not just the high school ranks. Youth sports are also on hold, waiting for clearance to play. That means some 3 million students from T-ball sluggers to high school seniors waiting for encouraging news.
More than 1 million high school students, including athletes and those in marching bands, dance and cheer, watched in slow motion as the spring months of 2020 activities were wiped away. Now half of this academic year has gone, leading to statewide rallies to call for kids to play sports again.
Has the CIF quit on kids?
No, not even close, but frustration leads to blame, and a lot of students, coaches, parents and fans say the California Interscholastic Federation, which oversees high school sports, is not doing enough to get kids back into competitions. The frustrated also aim their angst at Gov. Gavin Newsom. The CIF and its 10 section offices have the brutal task of trying to find a way to make it all work.
The Southern Section in Southern California and the Central Section in the Fresno/Bakersfield area have canceled the fall sports playoffs for Season 1 sports: football, cross country, volleyball and water polo. It’s not that big of a deal, really, when there are also no regular seasons. Then it might become a deal.
The North Coast Section in the Bay Area also canceled playoffs for all sports.
As for the local section, the Sac-Joaquin, it is allowing for a football “bowl” game to cap any reduced regular season this spring to be played, provided there are no more delays. And provided football can be played. Under current state plans, football will not be allowed beyond April, and football practice in full order cannot happen if schools are in purple tier.
Coaches and athletes are pained by not having postseasons, but have said they would play any amount of games just to get any games in, since they’ve had nothing since March with the coronavirus took hold.
And this: The CIF lays out a schedule but it ultimately comes down to state and county health guidelines; school districts to decide how to play out seasons. Stay-at-home orders have to be lifted in counties hopeful of playing sports, and hospitalizations have to continue to trend the right way — away from COVID-19.
But really, is the CIF over its head?
No, again.
The CIF stalled the start of fall sports in a July announcement when COVID-19 numbers surged. This was an attempt to buy time, to hope that masking up and social distancing would lower the virus surge.
It hasn’t happened enough to satisfy the California Department of Public Health. The CIF speaks regularly with CDPH in an effort to find common ground, including allowing football to play in the red tier, not the recommended orange tier, which is two stages below the most restrictive purple tier.
So yes, the CIF continues to advocate for high school students. It is in the business to provide students with a chance to compete, to have memories, not to grump on teams and seasons. The CIF has made it known that it will rely on science and not the emotions of parents, coaches or athletes, though the CIF commissioners have stated that they feel for those on pause. They’re on pause, too.
How can you have prep sports amid distance learning?
That’s a big question and concern.
One argument is that if it’s not deemed safe enough by a district or county health to have hundreds of students bumping elbows and shoulders in hallways, then how can it be safe enough to allow contact sports such as football or close-encounter sports such as basketball or wrestling?
Sacramento County has not reopened its schools this academic year, which includes the Elk Grove Unified School District, the most populated in Northern California with more than 63,000 students.
Other Sacramento region districts have opened, including in hybrid form, but there have been stop-and-starts, including within Placer County schools. The most populated school district on the West Coast — Los Angeles Unified, with nearly 600,000 students — is also still in distance learning.
So it’s possible that some school districts will resume to sports activities while others do not.
Are the rallies and coaching movements reaching the governor?
Newsom is aware of the rallies and the frustration of those who want to play and those who want to watch, including parents, many of whom stress the mental health toll on students without any sense of normal or any activities.
On Jan. 19, the Golden State High School Football Coaches Community and the Facebook “Let Them Play” movement that organized statewide rallies advocating prep sports, sent a letter addressed to the “Honorable Governor Gavin Newsom.” The letter requested an immediate return to prep sports competition and seeks a meeting with the governor and his staff.
The Golden State coaching community includes nearly 300 high school football coaches. They conducted studies since May 1 among 275 football programs, there were no hospitalizations or deaths tied to COVID-19, tracing to their programs.
The letter to Newsom argued, “based on the data that youth athletic competition does not pose any significant risk to the participants or community at large.”
In short, those wanting to get back into sports are asking for one thing: give us a chance. But is the chance too risky?
Why did the CIF change course regarding club sports?
In July, the CIF announced that it would allow students who to compete in a club sport — one not affiliated with a high school. Unusual times call for adjustments. Club sports are especially popular in baseball, softball, volleyball, soccer, swimming and basketball, meaning just about everything but football.
But on Wednesday, the CIF removed the temporary waiver because the CDPH has guidelines on “cohorting” — students playing on different teams with different groups of people, thus the potential for COVID-19 transmission and spread.
The CDPH guidelines in part say, “athletes and coaches should cohort by team, and refrain from participating with more than one team over the same season or time period.”
The real fallout here is this also translates to mean that with seasons squeezed in together, students cannot play two sports at once.
What about club football? Will that take over?
Not necessarily. Kudos to kids for getting a chance to play in club football, including the Iron Sharpen Iron team based in Sacramento, but this isn’t likely to take off statewide if prep sports resume any semblance of normalcy.
The CIF announced schools that defy county health orders and play games outside the CIF could face fines, suspensions or dismissal.
What sports can play now?
The CDPH in December posted guidelines stipulating prep sports could not start before Jan. 25, as long as stay-at-home directives are lifted in an effort to deal with the COVID-19 surge.
That’s Monday. It’s here. The local stay-at-home order was lifted Jan. 12, but the sporting menu is limited in what sports can take place in the most restrictive purple tier under the CIF’s “Season 1”: cross country running, skiing and snowboarding.
Other outdoor sports such as track and field, golf, tennis and swimming and diving are listed as CIF “Season 2” sports on the CIF calendar, and those wouldn’t start until March.
The first regional sporting event, in the Sac-Joaquin Section, is a cross country meet Monday in El Dorado, where Union Mine High received county health approval to have a meet with El Dorado, Golden Sierra and Oak Ridge, all within El Dorado County.
This story was originally published January 24, 2021 at 6:39 AM with the headline "Preps on pause questions: Will sports resume? Does the CIF care? What about clubs?."