St. Mike’s football shutdown serves as cautionary tale

As crazy as the last few weeks have been with the meteoric return of high school sports, as optimistic as things have gotten with the proposed tidal wave of school reopening April 5 — make sure you leave that foot hovering over the brake pedal.

Let last week’s coronavirus case at St. Michael’s serve as a cautionary tale that the pandemic, despite all our precautions, is alive and well and still capable of delivering the occasional haymaker. It’s doubtful that any of us need a refresher, that as good as things seem to be, the coronavirus is capable of slapping any of us when we’re least expecting it.

We’ve all known someone who was stricken, be it a family member or friend, maybe a neighbor. Some of us have known someone sick enough to be admitted to a hospital. A few of us have had a loved one die from it. Statistically speaking, a good number of the people reading this sentence have contracted the virus and recovered from it.

We get it: This thing is dangerous and we’re all at risk. St. Michael’s recently had a pair of positive tests, the latest coming from within the football program. It forced the cancellation of the Horsemen’s season opener in Raton and, because of the mandatory 10-day suspension of team activities, wiped out Saturday’s home opener against Socorro.

The focus now is, as always, on the well-being of the affected individual and those around him or her. Safety and a return to health are literally the only things that matter, not whether the Horsemen played a game or two.

Bottom line, if it happened to them it can happen to anyone.

That said, now isn’t the time to throw a victory parade and hail the unfiltered return of high school sports. Feel good about it, sure, but do so with an overabundance of caution.

By Wednesday afternoon, most of Northern New Mexico’s counties could be elevated to green status, allowing spectators back into gymnasiums and up to 50 percent capacity at outdoor venues. At this pace, we’ll be seeing crowds numbering in the thousands at state tournament events before the end of the school year, something that (pun intended) inject a welcome dose of life into May’s basketball championships.

If there was ever a time to temper our optimism, now’s it.

Just because the state, which has played yo-yo with prep sports’ emotions the last 12 months, says it’s OK for kids to head back to school doesn’t make things safe. The risks are still out there and, last time anyone checked, the vast majority of the target demographic for prep sports — kids younger than 16 — can’t get vaccinated. Just because the teachers who teach them and the adults who teach them are considered largely immune doesn’t make them safe.

With vaccinations ratcheting up by the day and teachers returning to work in droves, the idea is to get back to normal as soon as possible. In less than a month, school doors will swing open and kids will be allowed on campus full time, the same day, coincidentally, that traditional spring sports officially start.

The question isn’t if we’ll have a positive test shut a program down, it’s when.

So why, then, is it safe to throw caution to the wind when the very reason we all want prep sports back — the kids — are left vulnerable? Are we all so desperate to watch our prep sports that we’re willing to pretend we’re all good?

The odds appear to be in safety’s favor.

Just be prepared to pump those brakes.