Panelists discuss risks of youth sports’ return
No one has the perfect answer for how sports should return.
The COVID-19 pandemic is unlike any event in modern history. Not since World War II have organized sports worldwide been halted at this magnitude due to external factors.
Humanity is still navigating its way to solutions, but resuming sports has widely been considered one of the likely first steps to normalcy. Although professional and college sports have many obstacles before them before restarting, the path back to play on a larger scale has been less convoluted for local youth sports.
The safety and health concerns associated with that return, along with the impact on social issues connected to youth sports, were two focuses of “COVID-19 & The Future of Youth Sport,” a panel discussion hosted virtually by Arizona State’s Global Sports Institute on Friday.
In a recent poll, GSI found that a majority of parents surveyed have concerns about letting their children resume playing sports, with 63% saying that they would not let their children play without a COVID-19 vaccine. Still, 72% said that the inability to play sports “has caused their child stress or anxiety.”
The challenge becomes in balancing the need to encourage athletic activity in youth — that actually decreases the risk for some conditions like hypertension and obesity that make COVID-19 more dangerous — with the necessary changes to team sports that make social distancing difficult.
Panelist Renata Simril, president and CEO of the LA84 Foundation, which manages the endowment from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, said those healthy habits often aren’t practiced anyway, but they are vital during this once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis.
“I’m not a medical professional, but if you’re out moving, if you’re eating well ... you’re less likely to have diabetes,” Simril said. “We should see this in our middle school sports programs. We hope we’re taking this moment and taking action, bringing our ecosystem to say, ‘Let’s drive change. Let’s take some action.’ This change is not going to come overnight ... so if you’re going to engage in this work, make sure you have the courage and the fortitude to stick with it.”
High school organizations across the country, including in Arizona, are slowly returning to team-based workouts with social distancing guidelines. Outside of the prep scene, practices to prevent spread vary from group to group and place to place.
Phoenix Rising FC’s youth program hasn’t quite reached the point of playing games again yet, but team General Manager Bobby Dulle said training has been “flexible” and emphasizes making parents and players feel comfortable. Whether it be asking players to bring their own balls, prohibiting shared water bottles or coaches being required to wear masks, Dulle wants the club to be able to control what it can.
“We cannot eliminate all of the risk,” Dulle said. “What we can do is mitigate it as much as possible. We can’t get too far ahead of ourselves and say, ‘This is what it’s going to look like in September,’ because we don’t even know what it’s going to look like next week. It’s a lot of communication and education and ultimately, it’s a phased approach.”
How the state of youth sports will be impacted long-term by COVID-19 was a significant point of emphasis for Dr. Eric Legg, assistant professor in ASU’s School of Community Resources and Development.
He said he has both an optimistic side — an opportunity for the core values of sports, such as the development of life skills, to be rediscovered due to the crisis — as well as a pessimistic side that is concerned about gaps that might widen between people of different means being able to continue in youth sports.
“This is a chance for us to go back to localized, community-based sport,” Legg said. “People aren’t going to want to travel, they’re not going to want to spend the big money to go do the travel ... That’s what I hope happens.
“What I fear (will) happen ... is that it actually exacerbates the haves and have-nots. The folks who have the resources ... continue on, and those who don’t are left out. I don’t want to be that cynical person, but I think we need to be aware that that could happen.”
The divide in youth sports was a concern well before COVID-19 and can take many forms, such as income differences, and demographics. Regarding the latter, Dr. Ahada McCummings, National Director of Up2Us Sports, said she was concerned about the impact on girls and women in sports.
McCummings, whose organization focuses on getting and keeping females in athletics, is alarmed about sports participation being impacted by both the pandemic and the recent unrest across the country advocating for social justice. These are “stressors” that could discourage under-advantaged girls from participating in sports. Girls drop out of youth sports at about twice the rate boys do, she said, and an increase is what she fears.
“We’ve got to find ways to reengage (girls) into sports,” McCummings said. “What’s going to happen now that they’ve been gone? Are they going to get to a point where they say, ‘Yes, sports are back, I need this,’ or are they going to say, ‘You know what, I’ve engaged in some other stuff ... I’m going to go that route.’? That’s my major concern ... that this state we’re in right now is only going to facilitate those numbers in that drop off rate.”