Florida delays high school football amid coronavirus surge
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida's burgeoning coronavirus crisis is forcing its high schools to delay the start of their football and other fall sports seasons, a reversal aimed at quelling a revolt that could have pitted urban counties against their rural counterparts.
The Florida High School Athletic Association's board voted 11-4 Thursday night to push the first day of practices from Monday to Aug. 24 with games starting no earlier than mid-September instead of mid-August. The decision came as Florida has experienced a sharp increase in coronavirus deaths over the past two weeks, including another 136 recorded Friday as the state's total confirmed cases topped 400,000.
This was a reversal from earlier in the week when the same board voted 10-5 to start the season on time. That decision had angered administrators and coaches in Miami-Dade and other hard-hit urban counties as they could not safely start on time and their teams would likely not have been eligible to compete for state titles. The Miami-Dade school board threatened to withdraw from the association if the decision wasn't reversed.
Many of north Florida's rural counties have been lightly hit by the pandemic and some of their coaches wanted to start the seasons on time. Other affected sports include cross country, golf, swimming and girls volleyball.
“There are no good answers here,” Lee County school board member Chris Patricca said during Thursday's online meeting, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “There is no perfect scenario where we can conduct football safely in the state of Florida and still conduct every other season of sport in the state of Florida. We have to be agile. We have to make decisions that we've never had to make before because we're in a circumstance that we have absolutely never been in before.”
Riley Clements, a senior defensive end f or Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale, said he personally feels safe playing football, but understands the delay.
“I was disappointed to hear practice was pushed back, but as always things out of our control are going to pop up, so we just need to control the controllable and do our part to be ready for the season,” said Clements, 18.
Dr. Ro nS a ff, an allergist and asthma specialist in Tallahassee and board member of Florida Physicians for Social Responsibility, said Florida high schools should not have sports while the coronavirus spreads.