School leaders follow common sense, not state’s nonsense in starting sports

Because shortsighted. Because long troubled. Because Florida.

How else to explain the decision to start high school football practices as scheduled across the state late Monday night? How else to understand Florida High School Sports Athletic Association’s 10-5 vote to go against its own medical committee and

plow blindly ahead with practices July 27?

How much too should the Broward County Athletic Association be praised for coming out early Tuesday morning and saying it wouldn’t follow the state’s protocol? It will follow medical advice instead. It won’t start practices with the rest of the state.

It will, as the BCAA tweeted, “always put all of our student-athletes, coaches, volunteers and school personnel safety first.”

Thank you.

The sad part is once again there’s no big plan here, no grand design for dealing with the Coronavirus. It’s county-bycounty decisions, individual votes, my ideas against your schedules. To some, science matters; to others, beliefs trump science.

We’re a state of chaos, in other words, right down to the symbol of who we are as communities — the high schools. It’s just practices now, but soon it could be cheerleading, marching bands and fans packing the bleachers. It’ll be everything that comes with a high school game, and it’s an unnecessary risk in the current environment.

That’s not my opinion. That’s the conclusion of the FHSAA’s Sports Medical Advisory Committee. It concluded that starting football and volleyball is “not medically safe,” said committee chairman Dr. Jennifer Maynard, a Jacksonville physician.

All systems ahead, doctors be damned.

Because Florida. California, with the most COVID-19 cases, delayed high school sports until 2021. Florida, with the second-most, closes its eyes, ignores medical advice and simply forges blithely ahead, just as it did in reopening the state last month.

Where’d that get us?

And does Palm Beach follow Broward’s lead?

Miami-Dade? Orange County in Orlando?

The shame for high school kids is if they don’t commit to playing their schedule by some as-yet-unspecified date, they won’t be allowed to compete in state championships. In other words, if half the state starts football games as scheduled Aug. 20 and other areas push games back to Oct. 1, the late starters can’t compete for state titles.

Such rules affect the big-city schools with the bigger coronavirus problems. Maybe that’s by design?

“They finally found a way to slow down Dade County,‘’ Columbus High football coach Dave Dunn tweeted.

Here’s an idea: Set the season back to winter if necessary. It’s a warmweather state. You can play then. Sure, two-sport players will be penalized, but there is no perfect solution here, just as there’s no normal world.

The FHSAA decision represents the latest in a line of a leadership vacuum that keeps Florida at the epicenter of this pandemic. It’s like watching Pat Sajak spin the Wheel of Fortune — whatever subject comes up, Florida keeps proving it can be dumber than the rest of the country.

Masks? Our politicians mocked them for months. Community closings? Our governor pushed for everything to reopen — and now bars and restaurants are back to familiar issues. Schools? When President Trump demanded they open, Gov. Ron DeSantis immediately demanded they should open in person — just as Florida was setting record for positive virus tests.

DeSantis also said it was important football be played this fall. No mention of how to do it safely, when to do it properly, what precautions should be taken or who should oversee the medical concern.

Besides, the real question is simply this: Why? Why should football start when so much else is on hold for safety? Why not push it back 28 days for now, as the FHSAA’s medical committee suggested?

Why didn’t the FHSAA, at the very least, delay the start of practice by a couple of weeks, as was proposed, to gather more information?

The baseline for restarting schools should be a 5% positivity rate in a community, said Michelle Williams, the head of the Harvard School of Public

Health. Florida had a 14.7% positivity rate on its Monday tests for the coronavirus.

“A month ago, I would’ve said this is a problem for Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County,” said FHSAA board member Mark Schusterman, the co-athletic director at Miami’s Riviera Prep. “But the people that are living in a dream world, [believing] that the rest of this state is not being affected by this, are not seeing reality. We need to delay sports.”

Everyone wants sports back. Everyone wants normal life to return. But everyone also should see by now that bringing the normal life back on simple want and not scientific data will bring the next setback.

Do you want the FHSAA to delay the fun of sports or do you want, eventually, the virus to do it in a harsher manner?

It’s tough enough for pro leagues to start up. The NFL players and owners are bickering over safety issues. Several baseball players opted out rather than go forward with the 60-game schedule that includes travel.

The NBA drew up a 113-page plan to continue its season in a protective biosphere at Walt Disney World, complete with regular testing, monitors to assure no one wanders outside and masks everywhere but on the court.

This is what the pro leagues are going through. Maybe they can conduct their seasons safely. We’ll see. But for high school kids there should be more concern. There at least should be the consideration of backing off the schedule a couple of weeks to gather more information.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson made the leaky point that school should open because if students, “do get COVID-19 — and they will when they go to school — they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re not going to have to sit in doctor’s offices. They’re going to go home, and they’re going to get over it.”

Right. They’ll transmit it to family and friends, who will transmit it again, and we’ll be in worse shape. Thanks goodness Broward leaders showed common sense in the middle of this nonsense.

As for how the state’s high school leaders blindly kept football practices on schedule, there’s just one answer:

Because Florida.

Dave Hyde