If HS football is back, let’s do it responsibly
MILLINGTON — They stood by the bleachers and talked about the student section that was only “kind of a student section” this year.
Lynn Yates talked about the decision to allow her son to play football in the middle of a pandemic — “A lot of prayer,” she admitted — and Millington junior Koreena Bedford talked about the stress of hybrid learning.
They talked about being here, moments before kickoff, after months and months of not being able to talk like they normally could.
“This is what we’ve been looking forward to,” Yates said. “Sitting under the Friday night lights talking to our friends and watching our boys.”
This is the blessing and the curse that accompanies the return of high school football in Tennessee and throughout the suburbs of the Memphis area. It is, year after year, one of the few activities that always brings communities together and bridges cultural divides. This year, the year of the pandemic, we’re all ready to be together again.
But in the age of COVID-19 and mask mandates and social distancing, the very thing that makes high school football so special is also what makes it particularly risky.
So if we’re going to take this plunge, if we’ve determined that high school football is important enough to the fabric of our children’s lives that it needs to be played with a virus that’s killed more than 170,000 Americans still floating in the air, let’s at least do it responsibly.
I’ve been about as gung ho about the return of sports as anyone out there. I’m thrilled watching the NBA and the NHL and Major League Baseball and professional golf. I’m excited that the NFL is going through training camp. Even college football, while scary, seems worth pursuing at the moment.
What those leagues have taught us, though, is that a bubble, or at the very least frequent testing, is the way to do this prudently.
All of those sports can at least cite greed for why they’re moving forward with competition in the middle of a pandemic. They’ve all got hundreds of millions of dollars at stake if they don’t play. The business of college football supports entire towns.
At least in those instances, livelihoods hang in the balance. At least there are some safeguards in place. High school football in Tennessee doesn’t seem to have any of that. At the moment, our plan for pulling this off is to close our eyes and hope it works.
“We oftentimes get paralyzed out of fear for something that may or may not happen in the future,” is how Gov. Bill Lee put it recently. “I think, for me, that’s not a
good way to lead.”
But there’s a better way to lead, a way that could actually result in a high school football season being played with a little more than luck and a prayer.
Give these schools the resources to provide weekly, or at least periodic, COVID-19 tests to the players and coaches and students. Give these schools the resources to actually enforce the protocols that health departments have recommended.
If that all sounds expensive, of course it is. But if the school systems don’t have the money to do it, that’s understandable. They also don’t need to play football. If the adults in the room can’t come up with a safe plan, if they have to hide what might not be working, they shouldn’t be playing football.
That brings us to Collierville High School.
It banned reporters from attending its first game against Briarcrest because, “we need to verify our established protocols and procedures of social distancing are efficient and effective to ensure the safety of athletes, students, families and spectators at this time,” according to a press release.
“We are committed to being transparent,” Collierville Schools communications specialist Mario Hogue had the gumption to say in an interview Friday.
Apparently that only applies if it makes Collierville look good.
If schools like Collierville can’t ensure the safety of the people attending its football game — about 650 fans in this case — it shouldn’t be holding a game in the first place.
If it’s afraid the plan and protocols might not stand up to the scrutiny of independent observers like the media, come up with a better plan. Don’t just wheel it out and risk the health of everyone attending who thinks you actually know what you’re doing.
(And the behavior and comments from Collierville officials this week suggest they don’t have a clue).
This is not meant as an indictment on all the well-meaning people across the region and state, in places like Millington, trying to make this work.
I watched Millington principal Mark Neal frequently tell students to social distance. I listened to the reminders over the public address system about wearing a mask at all times. I heard the national anthem played by the school’s band director on his saxophone because the band wasn’t there.
I spoke to the parents working the scaled-down concession stand with only pre-packaged food, and “everybody wants a hamburger and we don’t have any hamburgers,” Bonnie Nutzell said with a laugh.
It wasn’t normal, but it felt joyous at times. You could hear the relief in people’s voices, just to be outside again enjoying an annual tradition COVID-19 hadn’t completely ruined.
And yet the bleachers were hard to ignore. Most of the Millington side wore masks. Keeping them separated was significantly more difficult. Across the field, very few Ripley fans had a mask on and they were mostly packed together like this was any other Friday night.
I talked to Bedford, the Millington junior, about what it’s been like since returning to class, when she’s only in the building twice per week. She said it’s “kind of stressful” being the only person in her ACT class, and that she’s one of four people in her Spanish class.
But it sounds sensible given the circumstances, right?
So now explain why it was sensible for her to spend an entire week in class like that and then be put in a crowd of 600 to 700 people Friday night?
A crowd that wanted to talk to their friends again. That wanted to watch their boys play high school football again.
I hope they can, but we should have more than just hope.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto