Challenging the call to play fall sports

Young athletes of every generation never truly appreciate how anxiety over injuries can roil in the stomachs of their parents and grandparents watching from the sidelines during games. Youth has a way of forging an ephemeral sense of invincibility, yet injuries sustained on the field can last a lifetime.

But parents, some bearing limps and scars from their own youthful competitions, recognize the lessons of pain.

Five months ago, our first editorial about the coronavirus was an effort to stifle backlash to a call made by Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference Executive Director Glenn Lungarini to cancel winter sports tournaments. The bold call made Connecticut the first state to do so. We stood by Lungarini as the Twitterverse howled and student-athletes gathered much too closely to one another in protests.

“Coronavirus is no game,” we wrote. “The only number that matters is how many lives could be saved by taking precautions such as canceling events. That number doesn’t need to be more than one.”

COVID-19 moved so swiftly in March that most of the outrage was hushed within days. Connecticut had followed a smart strategy, and the state’s game plan since then has been among the best in the nation.

A 9-1 vote by the CIAC’s football committee to push its sport off until spring aligned with that cautious approach. But the committee lost in overtime to the Board of Control, which declared that football, along with cross country, soccer, volleyball and swimming, would start fall seasons in the weeks to come.

“It was a consensus that the opinion we’ve had from July 30 (has) not changed and that it’s appropriate to play fall sports, including football, at this time,” Lungarini said in a Zoom conference call.

The decision seemed to astonish even football coaches. St. Joseph’s veteran coach Joe Della Vecchia said he was surprised but agreed, concluding, “If the kids are going to be at school, they should be allowed to be playing sports.”

Such reasoning does not hold up. Dismissing so many concerns to play anyway has the impulsive feel of going with the gut, like calling for a Hail Mary pass with the clock ticking.

Well, the clock is ticking, but we need to embrace logic over gut instincts, science over prayers.

The announcement seems particularly tone deaf in the wake of college football programs canceling seasons.

Everyone wants life to return to normal. Efforts to coordinate how to educate children starting in a few weeks have, and will be, tortured. But education is essential — sports is not.

So much of this focus is on football because its nature of contact mocks the notion of social distancing more than any sport short of wrestling. There’s a bloodlust to reviving football, which is already facing scrutiny over frequency of concussions.

The final call, thankfully, won’t be left in the hands of league officials, coaches or teenagers. Ultimately, the only referees that matter will be parents.

Well, the clock is ticking, but we need to embrace logic over gut instincts, science over prayers.