De La Salle, Serra football coaches fight for kids to play

Their passion is unmistakable, their message is clear.

Last year at this time, De La Salle’s Justin Alumbaugh and Serra’s Patrick Walsh were in their element, preparing football teams for state championship games.

Now, the high-profile Bay Area coaches are fighting for an opportunity, an opportunity to show that high school sports can be played amid a pandemic, an opportunity to give deflated kids across California a chance to smile again, an opportunity that has been shelved since March.

Nine months into the coronavirus pandemic, high school sports in California remain on hold, with no start date in sight. The California Interscholastic Federation had hoped to begin practices this month — four months later than usual — but delayed those plans last week because long-awaited guidance from state health officials isn’t expected until at least Jan. 1.

Until then, the wait continues for hundreds of thousands of frustrated teenagers.

“I don’t pretend to be an expert on much, but I’m an expert on dealing with youth, and we know how to follow guidance,” Alumbaugh said. “And if we are given the opportunity, I’m very, very confident we can do it.”

Alumbaugh and Walsh, who both played for and assisted under legendary De La Salle coach Bob Ladouceur, are in the camp that youth sports are not superspreaders of the virus, though it’s spread nationwide and in California is accelerating.

They have spoken to coaching colleagues across the country whose teams played football this fall. They understand the challenges that await if given the opportunity to play.

But they’ll gladly accept those challenges for kids to have a season, no matter his or her sport.

“The kids have sacrificed,” Walsh said. “They’ve done what we’ve asked them to do. You know as adults, as leaders, as parents, we always say, ‘Hey, you need to sacrifice. You know, you’re a kid. You’re not an adult yet.’ Well, when is it their time?”

For Walsh and Alumbaugh, the time to speak up on their behalf is now.

On Thursday, the coaches spent 30 minutes on a Zoom video conference with two Bay Area reporters.

Here are excerpts from the Q&A:

If you had an opportunity to talk to the governor or California Department of Public Health officials, what would you ask and what would you want to hear from them?

Walsh: “I would ask the governor and state of California to give us a chance. I think up to 40 states have been given that chance. Not everything went well. Some teams played one game, some teams played 10 games. And I’ve been talking to my friends throughout the country — in Tennessee, Georgia, other places — I know nothing’s perfect. But I can tell you there’s a 0% chance of this being perfect if the kids don’t get to play — 0% chance. It’s just been really, really, really awful, and I would want Gov. Newsom and them to know the pain that it’s caused not given an opportunity. Maybe we play one game. Maybe we play seven. But given that chance, I think, potentially, we could surprise people. We could surprise people on the other side to prove that in the hands of the right people — guys like Justin, guys like us, who care and are willing to do anything we can to keep the community safe while also providing opportunity and knowing that there’s pain and mental suffering on the other side — would be the best thing that could happen, I believe, in hopefully January or February.”

Alumbaugh: “I’m not a doctor, but I do try to be educated, and I listen to scientists, and I listen to doctors. I had a nice long email with a doctor that works nearby. He’s the father of seven kids — a lot of them have come through De La Salle — and we had a nice, long talk about science. It seems like sometimes we’re picking and choosing what science we’re using, and the science dictates that schools and athletics that are done following proper guidelines are not superspreader events. Just give us the opportunity to actually try this out and to help our kids get out and do something that makes them happy. There’s a costbenefit for everything, right? We’re in a pandemic. We know that. The misnomer that we’re just, ‘We want to get out and we want to win games,’ that is idiotic and it’s asinine. We want to provide our kids with some smiles. What I’m spending most of my day dealing with right now is mental health. I’m serious. I’m just dealing with the mental health of our kids. There’s a cost-benefit, right?”

In your conversations with coaches around the country whose teams have played, what are some examples of doing football safely in this climate when you’re actually having contact in practice?

Walsh: “There is a roadmap from Eddy Zubey, former (De La Salle) Spartan at Higley High School (in Arizona). There’s a roadmap from Sione Ta’ufo’ou that we know he coached at Mitty. He’s coaching at Lipscomb Academy in Nashville, Tennessee. Alli Abrew, former Spartan, coaching out in Georgia. There’s a roadmap for us. That’s the positive thing that we have is that people have … gotten it done relatively safely. As Justin said, there’s not in those 36 states (that have played) a ton of data that supports that, ‘Oh my God, this spread happened. Bam. And that’s the defining moment for them.’ So I like the fact that there is a roadmap in other states that give us the opportunity.”

Alumbaugh: “Here’s the thing, I don’t want a single human getting it. I don’t want to get it. I don’t want my children to get it. I don’t want my father to get it. I don’t want my wife to get it. Nobody wants anyone to get this thing. OK. But the evidence is stating that, and everyone that we’ve talked to, that these events, these athletic events, when they’re done following good protocol at schools … they are not these spreader events. Someone tests positive, you shut down that pod. Those guys are quarantined for whatever time it is and then off they go. It doesn’t spread and it doesn’t spread to the other team or anything like that. … We want to see kids doing what they love in a safe environment. When there’s no guidelines, or if we’re not provided the opportunity, then we’re getting a lot of rogue things that are going on — when you’re showing up at parks and no one’s following any guidelines or anything like that. Those are not good events. Those are not good events and that’s frustrating for us.”

When the CIF announced last week that the start of play would be delayed even longer, did you address your teams, particularly the seniors, and what was your message?

Alumbaugh: “Well, two things. One. we’ll see you tomorrow at (conditioning) practice. I had them down at 7 a.m. the following day because idle minds create, you know, some troubling times. I’ll give our kids credit. Every kid was accounted for. Some of them couldn’t get to the 7 a.m. workout because they had to work with their younger siblings at home who are on Zoom. They have to manage that because their parents are at work — strange times — but you know all of our kids showed up the next morning and the message was this: ‘We’re going to bat for you. We’re going to try and get things done.’ I am actually confident that we’re going to get something in. It’s not going to look like what a normal season would, and we don’t care. I don’t care whether we have playoffs or a state championship. Patrick doesn’t care. If we’re given the opportunity, Patrick and I will play right now in a dirt lot. If we’re given that opportunity, the first game, every one of my kids is getting in because we don’t know there’s going to be a second one. … A lot of our kids play multiple sports and I told them, ‘If sports overlap, do however many sports you want. You got to leave football practice to go take an at-bat, absolutely. If you want to run cross country and play football, absolutely. Do whatever you can that makes you happy.’”

Walsh: “One of the things that I felt the most during this whole thing is a sense of helplessness. I know a lot of us have felt that way. The kids feel helpless. The parents feel helpless. The coaches feel helpless. You know, we feel like our government, above us, declaring what is best for us, which we need guidance. I’m not saying we don’t need guidance. But the concept that it’s just a straight shutdown has been very, very difficult for us to deal with. And what can we do? Now hopefully these types of conversations get to the right people where it’s like, ‘Give these people a chance, or the clubs are going to get a chance.’ (Reports on social media of club football have emerged in recent weeks).

Last year at this time, you were getting ready to play for state titles. What are you doing now?

Alumbaugh: “We’re testing our seniors today (in preparation for recruiting). We’re doing a sort of minicombine because we’re in small groups now, so we’ve got to get a lot of video cameras out there. … We’ve got a lot of seniors that normally would have an extra entire year, potentially 15 games worth of tape, and they don’t have anything right now. They just have some film that they had from last year. They’re not these huge, Division I guys — UCLA and USC and things like that — but they’d be great for Cal Poly, UC Davis. There’s a lot of schools that would have a lot of interest in them — the Ivy Leagues. We’re compiling some film for them to be able to send out to all the college coaches on Hudl.”