High schools push ahead for football amid pandemic

AUSTIN, TEXAS » High schools across the country are trying to figure out how and when students might return to classrooms this fall. Many are also making sure their star quarterbacks and other athletes will be in shape when they do.

While states have been easing the economic and social lockdowns prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, some are now letting high school athletes return for summer workouts before teachers have even figured out how they are going to hold classroom instruction.

In places like Texas and Florida, where the “Friday Night Lights” culture of high school football runs deep, strength and conditioning sessions are bringing thousands of athletes to school for workouts, even while those states are seeing record numbers of new cases and hospitalizations since Memorial Day.

Some schools have already been sent scrambling when a player tests positive.

At football powerhouse Arlington-Martin High School near Dallas, about

600 athletes attended the first day of summer conditioning programs June

8. That many kids, following state social distancing guidelines, were spread out over four athletic fields.

“It’s 13 weeks since we’ve had an organized workout with our teams,” coach Bob Wager said. “I think kids were excited to get out of the house.”

Eight days later, those same fields were empty when the school suspended workouts after a student tested positive and Wager and his staff began the work of tracing all of the athletes and get everyone to quarantine. Wager’s program was one of several Texas schools or districts to suspend workouts shortly after they started.

Still, dozens of states have been welcoming back high school athletes for strength and conditioning programs, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. And it’s not just football. Other sports such as volleyball and basketball, baseball and soccer can participate as well. Marching bands, too. Iowa became the first state to resume competitive high school sports when baseball and softball teams began play June 15.

In all, tens of thousands of high school athletes are working out or playing games. And with virus cases and hospitalizations rising in hot spots, their return is raising questions of whether it is too soon and too risky.

Instead of focusing only on how to return to sports, high schools should at least consider not playing at all, said Kenneth Shropshire, professor and chief executive of the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State.

“I’m really on the extreme of make things as safe as possible ... Just wait. It’s not that important. Even in Texas,” Shropshire said. “Could we forgo a year of high school football? Does the world come to an end?”