Coaches have ‘cooperative’ meeting with state officials but don’t get any answers
No decisions came out of Thursday’s meeting between California’s top health official and a group of advocates for the swift and safe return to play for youth and high school sports, but they called it another positive step, even as the clock continues to tick on a spring season for many sports.
The group of three coaches — De La Salle’s Justin Alumbaugh, Serra’s Patrick Walsh and Ron Gladnick of Torrey Pines — and Let Them Play cofounder Brad Hensley entered Thursday’s meeting with momentum after weeks of building pressure and a sympathetic statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom this week.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s secretary of health and human services, and Jim DeBoo, a top aide to Newsom, entered it with questions but also an apparent determination to get kids back on the field.
“We’re going to work right now to get the information that we need,” Alumbaugh said Thursday afternoon over the phone, following the meeting. “It was cooperative on all sides. It was not combative in any shape or form. There was a lot of respect from both ends. And there’s a definite feeling that everybody wants to get this done.”
However, another meeting that didn’t result in sports being detached from the tiered reopening system also means another day that goes by without anything but purple tier sports being played in almost all of California.
For a sport such as football, every day counts. For football to begin on schedule next year, this season has to conclude by April 17. Currently, it can’t be played until a county reaches the orange reopening tier, which requires a level of COVID-19 cases between 3 to 10 times lower than any Bay Area county now.
At least one Bay Area league declared March 1 the drop-dead date for Season 1 sports that don’t meet the tier requirement.
Even if practices began March 1 and the first games three weekends later, that gives teams only five weekends to play.
It only adds to the urgency of return-to-play advocates, who point to the fact that more than 40 other states have held high school sports competition with little correlation to the spread of COVID-19.
“It’s been proven, based on everything we’ve seen, that these are not superspreader events when done appropriately and properly,” Alumbaugh said.
He insisted that state health officials were wellintentioned and understood the urgency, but wanted to come to a compromise that would allow for the safe return of sports.
“They are very aware of all the moving parts. It definitely did not feel like they were trying to slow bleed us or anything like that,” Alumbaugh said. “It was a very cooperative meeting where everyone was trying to come up with answers and get a real, safe pathway to get kids out there as quickly as possible.”
Despite previous conversations with state officials and mounting pressure, Alumbaugh said the group entered the meeting without expectations of getting a conclusive answer but rather to “have a conversation to see where the state was at.” The presence of the state’s top health official was “definitely uplifting,” Alumbaugh said.
Another meeting is scheduled for early next week.
The next steps for the coaches, Alumbaugh said, are nailing down a start date and finalizing safety guidelines that they have been developing in coordination with the San Francisco 49ers and local colleges.
“We gotta get going,” he said. “There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered. Speaking specifically about football, which is not the entire conversation ... how practice, the locker room, how everything can be done safely. The next two biggest things we’ve got to get are start date and what are the best practices that we’re going to do.”