Coaches call for quick, safe return

A collection of coaches from around California requested this week in an open letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom that youth sports be exempted from the state’s tiered reopening system, in a last-ditch effort for there to be any season at all for many sports this spring.

The letter, which was delivered to Newsom Tuesday evening, makes a four-pronged argument for the quick and safe return to play. Patrick Walsh, the head football coach at Serra High School in San Mateo, read the letter aloud Thursday morning on a Facebook Live broadcast, and requested a meeting with the governor.

“The current youth sports’ colored-tiered system is disconnected from real data available,” reads the letter, which was signed by Walsh and six other prominent coaches. “The outcome of this system is a rapid decline in the mental health of all children who play youth sports in our state. This system creates a rapidly growing socioeconomic disparity between those that can afford private schools, those that live in higher economic school districts, and those who can afford club teams which are traveling outside the state by the thousands every week in violation of the current order. To save the California youth, we request youth sports be detached from the colored-tiered system entirely.”

As part of the California HSFB organization, Walsh has collected data from workouts at 275 schools throughout California, as well as data on the wellbeing of studentathletes in 105 football programs. According to Walsh, only 11 cases of COVID-19 have been traced back to more than 1 million workouts over the past month. But, in a survey of about 10% of the football programs in the state, Walsh said more than 1,000 student-athletes were now ineligible because of poor grades and 253 had dropped out altogether.