Fall sports are not worth risk

If there’s one thing time and experience should have taught us during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that the deadly coronavirus will ruthlessly exploit any opportunity to spread in our communities.

So why is Gov. Mike DeWine expected on Tuesday to bless the Ohio High School Athletic Association’s plan to proceed with high school and middle school fall sports despite the obvious risks?

All of us would prefer that sports, school and life could go back to normal. The desire to return to our pre-pandemic activities is understandable. It’s easy to empathize with the frustration shared by athletes, parents, coaches and fans. No one wants young athletes to be denied their chance — maybe their last or even only one — to compete in a sport they enjoy.

And we do not question the motivation of those who want to see sports played this fall. All of us want what is best for our children, athletes or not.

But returning to normal activities before it is safe to do so, before the virus has been reduced to sufficiently low levels, only risks compounding our problems — multiplying the infected, hospitalized and dead — and extending our time in pandemic purgatory. That is the awful arithmetic of this virus, which has claimed the lives of 170,000 of our fellow Americans in less than six months.

Sadly — and it brings us no pleasure to point this out — DeWine used to know that.

The governor earned well-deserved praise for his proactive decisions, based on science and the advice of medical experts — particularly then-Ohio Health Director Dr. Amy Acton — in the early stages of the pandemic, helping spare the state the high levels of infection and deaths that befell New York, Michigan, Louisiana and others.

DeWine was one of the first governors to recognize a patchwork response isn’t an effective strategy, and he quickly acted to close schools, limit crowds and restrict visitors to nursing homes across the state.

But the Republican governor started to wobble in late April when he first ordered and then quickly backtracked on a statewide mask mandate, which eventually came on July 22 as cases and infection rates in the state were spiking.

Now, after an inexplicable delay that only added to the uncertainty, he is about to tell us that fall sports can proceed safely.

With a few possible exceptions (golf, maybe tennis and cross country), they can’t. Practices and competition will necessarily increase the odds that athletes, coaches and fans will be infected. Not even Major League Baseball, with a nearly limitless budget, frequent testing and millions of dollars in revenue at stake, has been able to prevent widespread outbreaks among its players and staff.

Are we to believe cash-strapped middle schools and high schools will do better? Hardly.

DeWine will tell us that even young athletes know and accept the inherent risks associated with participation in sports, that even if infected they are less likely to suffer severe consequences.

And all of that is true as far as it goes. But a concussion isn’t contagious. Bringing home a broken bone does not expose an elderly grandparent or an immunocompromised sibling to mortal danger.

He also will tell us that sports teach many important values, including commitment, integrity, teamwork and shared sacrifice — and indeed those are lessons that should not be casually tossed aside.

But another lesson is even more valuable: learning how to recognize when the known risk outweighs the reward.

And when that is the case, being the leader — of a team or a state — requires saying no.

— Akron Beacon Journal, Aug. 15