CONDITIONING IS BACK
Temperature checks, masks the norm as team conditions for 1st time of school year
Student- athletes line up in pods of 10 to condition for the potentially upcoming high school football season. Starting this past Monday, sports conditioning for high school sports was finally allowed to begin, as district administrators continued clearing the individual team’s detailed plans. Regardless of the color tier and the stay at home order throughout Yolo County, district staff have been assured by the County health departments that conditioning for the student- athletes will continue ahead of their tentatively scheduled season start dates set for sometime in January. The sports scheduled to start are football, volleyball, cheer, and cross country.
While it was not practice, coaches were giving out instructions, student- athletes were running, and the smell of grass was in the air. If you imagined everyone without a mask, for a second, a sense of normalcy and in some cases, sanity would be restored.
Beginning this past Monday, the Woodland and Pioneer High School football programs began athletic conditioning ahead of their upcoming seasons for the first time this school year after being granted permission by the district over Thanksgiving break.
“It felt really good,” said Wolves head football coach Javier Marin. “You could see the mental health aspect of the kids being happy and relieved that they can just be back on campus, getting ready for a sport that they love to compete in.”
While conditioning will go a long way in helping restore a sense of normalcy for the students, community, and coaches, watching them go about it is anything but normal.
Every player takes a temperature check before entering the field. Masks and gloves are available on request. They all receive a hand sanitizer pump and have to answer the usual screening
questions. While running, the mask stays on the athletes the entire time.
Students are also expected and asked to stay eight to ten feet away from others to go a little extra. Markings on the field and cones give them the constant reminder to maintain a safe distance.
Coaches are also taking some new precautions, including bringing air horns to avoid using whistles. The water tank, a staple at football practices, is no longer allowed for the time being. Before the first session, coaches held a Zoom meeting with the team going over what will be different. Lack of locker room access is also something the students will need to get used to.
“It was hard for me not to shake their hand or give them a hug because I haven’t seen them since March,” Marin continued. “I’m just happy that we can put this together, and our district office and administration supported us, and we are going to see the benefits at the end.”
Conditioning sessions will be no longer than 45 minutes to allow the next pod of students to be screened.
For the first week, the session was scheduled at 3: 30. There were five pods of no more than 10 students properly spaced out on Tuesday, two for varsity, two for junior varsity, and one for the freshman. As of Wednesday, the Wolves had 44 cleared athletes for all three levels.
Because some students are still going through the clearing process, only one session took place, but coach Marin expects those numbers to rise. Once the numbers do, they will hold another session at 4: 15 where he expects two more varsity pods.
“I want to progress, just like in any sport, you want to get better,” Marin said. “Hopefully, in the next aspect of this, we can have some type of weights outside or use a football. For us to get better, we have to have the main instrument. We need that just to have that feel for it. Those are the building blocks we aim for. With proper screening, we can add more.”
While Marin knows he is behind other schools in the area in terms of conditioning time, he doesn’t let that get to him. All he can focus on is what he can control.
“We are here now, and all we can do is get better every day,” Marin said. “Do I wish if I had a time machine to go back and get this system I place since June? Of course. But we were in uncharted territory, and I’m pretty sure everyone is ruling on the side of caution. We have this opportunity now, and we are going to take it.”
Back in June, after weeks of speculation, the California Interscholastic Federation — the governing body for all California high school sports — announced that they had postponed fall sports into either the winter or spring of 2021 due to the COVID- 19 pandemic.
According to a tentative schedule set earlier this year by the CIF, high schools can begin practicing in December, and games for the fall sports season, including football, can occur as soon as January.
For football, the CIF has said the actual practice can begin on Dec. 14, and games can start as early as Jan. 6. This is all pending county approval.
While that may be an ambitious timeline set during a time when cases were not as rampant throughout the nation and county, teams and coaches continue to aim for those dates regardless of any real clarity. It’s all they can do.
“As a staff, the best we can do for these kids to put them in a position to succeed and compete is for us to plan like a season is happening,” Marin said. “The worst thing we can do is not doing anything at all. In this sport, you can’t play catch up.”