When should youth sports really return?
Konrad Ott and some of the parents with his Northern California girls volleyball club skipped a popular Florida tournament that is now postponed. They could soon face a similar decision about a national event in Dallas.
A boys baseball tournament organizer in the St. Louis area generated debate by staging an event less than a week after the Missouri governor cleared such gatherings.
These scenarios playing out across the nation illustrate how a return to youth sports amid the coronavirus pandemic is fraught with questions, from the health of everyone who attends to the ethics of potentially putting children in harm’s way in the name of getting back to business.
“Obviously, there’s two sides to this story,” said Rob Worstenholm, whose youth baseball tournament in suburban St. Louis with social-distancing alterations for 50 teams or so was among the first sports activities of any kind since the shutdown in March. “I mean, 50% of the people hate me. But the other 50%, I could have run for president.”
The Amateur Athletic Union was planning to proceed with a volleyball event it has touted as the world’s largest, scheduled for June in Orlando, Florida. An event that drew nearly 3,000 teams last year had
about 500 entrants when it was postponed Friday and moved to mid-July.
Ott’s Absolute Volleyball Club included six of the hundreds of teams that withdrew even as the AAU spent two weeks saying the event would be held with temperature checks, no handshakes and plenty of space between courts at the sprawling Orange County
Convention Center.
While some clubs said organizers didn’t make it clear what would happen if a player, coach or parent tested positive for the coronavirus, Ott’s issue was the plan to allow each team’s group to be twice as large as he thought it needed to be.
Politics are at play as well.