As the school year closes, questions have begun to arise about the plan for the fall sport season. With the current guidelines of social distancing for COVID-19, it’s hard to tell how we could maintain contact sports such as football and water polo. Summer training for fall sports will have to be put on hold because if the shelter-in-place order continues extending. With the extreme level of uncertainty for the resume of normal life, sports seem to be put behind figuring out the plan for the resume of school.
“Right now we are really just reacting to the news we get,” said Aragon athletic director Steve Sell. “We are planning for all different scenarios, best case to worst case.”
All sports, including fall sports, can be risky as most violate the social distancing guidelines issued by the county.
“There’s really hardly any sport that you can do with you know, keeping the social distancing guidelines, and even tennis you’re gonna handle the same ball back and forth,” Sell said. “Golf you’re playing foursomes. You know, people aren’t gonna play just as a party of one that wouldn’t be practical. Even cross country, you can’t even be six feet apart.”.
Social distancing requires two individuals from separate households to stay at least six feet apart from each other in an effort to ease the spread of an infectious disease. Sports such as water polo and football, both included in the fall season, require physical contact with other players. Other fall sports such as cross country, volleyball and golf , while not necessarily requiring physical contact, play and practice within six feet of each other.
With recent predictions made on how long we will need to practice social distancing, it is hard to know if playing sports will be able to go on normally for a while.
“People around the world might need to practice some level of social distancing intermittently through 2022 to stop COVID-19 from surging anew and overwhelming hospital systems,” said a group of Harvard researchers on April 13.
So what can we expect for high school sports?
“What I anticipate is kind of an all or nothing,” Sell said. “I don’t think they are going to have some fall sports start and some not.”
Other questions have been raised about the college recruiting process, with athletes losing crucial sport seasons for recruitment opportunities.
“The colleges are going to have to be creative with how they evaluate athletes,” Sell said.
While the Central Coast Section has not made an official decision on the matter of fall sports, anticipation is high. The California Interscholastic Federation is holding a meeting in May where some of these questions may be answered.
