The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Even with go-ahead, coaches concerned
Golf is ‘low-contact’ by state standards, but teams are taking precautions
A high school golf season is coming soon to Northeast Ohio. Unless it isn’t.
On July 14, the OHSAA put out an announcement stating Gov. Mike DeWine’s office declared boys and girls golf as “low-contact sports.” This allows area programs to, for the time being, hold competitions and start their seasons on time.
Even with that announcement, some coaches and teams are still apprehensive about the start of the season.
“I think it’s great that low-contact sports are allowed to compete, but that doesn’t mean everything’s in the clear,” Olmsted Falls girls golf coach Emily Nagle said. “I think these next couple of weeks are going to be really important to get the number of cases down.”
Nagle’s spent her summer seeing first-hand how quickly things can change in regard to high school sports.
Since the OHSAA allowed schools to reopen for individual skill training on May 26, Nagle and the Bulldogs have been meeting twice a week at Mallard Creek Golf Club for practices.
At first, their practice changes were minimal, with almost all of them related to social distancing. That’s changed in recent weeks, however. As novel coronavirus cases have spiked across Northeast Ohio and the nation, Nagle has mandated masks at practices.
“We mandated masks once Cuyahoga County got to level three,” Nagle said. “The girls show up in masks and anytime they’re walking around in the clubhouse or walking between the putting green and driving range they’re wearing a mask. Once they get to the driving range they can take it off and once they get to the tee box they can take it off when they play. The first day they were giving a little pushback, but now they seem to be used to it.”
Much like Nagle, Avon girls golf coach Aaron Millet is planning on having to make some pandemicrelated changes to the Eagles’
practices. While Millet and the Eagles haven’t officially started practice yet — they’re planning on starting this week — he knows this season will look different compared to seasons past.
“The first day of tryouts, you never know how many kids you’re going to get, but I’d imagine I’m going to have to divide them up into three groups to keep the numbers down,” Millet said. “This is actually my first year coaching at Avon, and we we haven’t really done as much this summer as we’re probably going to do in future summers because of the pandemic.”
The official fall sports practice season begins on Aug. 1, with the golf season starting not long after that. Normally, the early start of the season is a coach’s dream because it means the season will barely, if at all, go into colder months. This year, however, that early start could end up being a nightmare.
“Before the second spike happened, I was hopefully we’d be able to get the entire season in and be done by the middle of October. But now I’m not as confident about that,” Nagle said. “I thought that if we kept the numbers down in Ohio, we’d be in really good shape for having a season. But now there’s just so much
out of our hands it’s really just a day to day things. If we’re allowed to play, we’ll get going right away.”
If teams are able to start on time, Nagle said they’ll receive guidelines from the state that will outline competition changes for the season.
“We’re really just waiting to see what those guidelines are,” she said. “I think everyone has to be flexible with any sudden changes or anything like that. I’m fine doing whatever we can to make sure that these kids are safe and that we’re able to have a season.”
While there might be some changes, Millet believes they’ll be minimal compared to other sports.
“Golf is the ultimate social distancing sport, especially at the high school level since you’re playing your own ball and don’t really ever have to interact with anyone around you aside from normal golf etiquette which can be done from 26 feet away, much less six feet,” he said. “To me golf is a sport that everybody should be able to play without much of an issue.
“Transportation isn’t much of a problem either since we’d be able to distance six girls on a bus with no problem. I think golf would be able to happen because of the simplicity.
You’re outside, there’s only a couple of people around you and you’re not sharing anything.”
On July 14, OHSAA interim Executive Director Bob Goldring said that it’s up to individual schools to decide to participate in fall sports, something that adds another level of uncertainty to an already unsettled situation. No matter what decision is made about the fall sports season, Millet is hoping that it isn’t an all-ornothing decision.
“I think football will be hard to pull off just because there really isn’t much room for distancing. But I think with a lot of these sports you’re able to do them if you really want to,” he said. “Making a blanket decision and canceling all fall sports would be unfair to these kids. You’d have a hard time convincing me that a tennis player couldn’t play tennis or a golfer couldn’t play golf under these conditions. Right now, we’re allowing AAU basketball tournaments to go on indoors and yet you’re going to stop all fall sports.”
Millet has a simple request for those in charge of determining what the high school sports season will look like:
“I hope each sport is looked at on an individual basis.”