Teams’ COVID risks no easy call
Every Monday, Monica Ramos’ two children pay a visit to the nurse’s office for a nasal swab test.
The younger of the two, 9-yearold Jeremiah Anguiano, is in fourth grade at Barrera Veterans Elementary in Somerset Independent School District.
Jeremiah is on the school basketball team. Ramos, a systems administrator, worries that he’ll contract COVID-19 from a teammate or an opponent. Jeremiah is fully vaccinated but too young to be eligible for a booster.
“That’s always a concern of mine,” Ramos said.
For parents intent on protecting their children from COVID, interscholastic sports are a roll of the dice. There’s no way for some parents to know whether their kids’ teammates or members of opposing teams have been tested for the virus or been vaccinated.
San Antonio-area school districts do not maintain a standardized COVID-19 testing policy for
students, faculty and staff. Some districts mandate weekly testing. Others strongly encourage testing but do not require it. Still others recommend testing only when students, faculty and staff exhibit obvious symptoms, a policy that allows asymptomatic infections to slip through.
“We don’t seem to be a state that lends itself to standardization,” said Dr. Junda Woo, medical director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. “In my ideal world, you know what kind of measures your opposing (team) is taking.”
“I don’t know if that’s at all realistic,” she added. “It’s probably not.”
The policy differences mean athletes from schools that require weekly testing and are confirmed negative regularly come into contact with athletes from schools that do not require weekly testing — the uninfected and the potentially infected mingling.
Exposure, and therefore transmission, could result, as only 63 percent of 12-to-18-year-olds in Bexar County were fully vaccinated in February.
“I think anytime you’re going into a situation where you’re with other people who either are not vaccinated or you don’t know their vaccination status, you’ve got to realize that you’re putting yourself at some greater risk,”
Woo said. “So a game with a different team is going to be higher-risk than, say, a practice game with your teammates.”
Differences
Many athletic directors said school districts are in constant communication about cases.
For example, said Kelly Parker, executive athletic director of North East Independent School District, if an athlete tests positive after a game, North East ISD is required to relay that information to the other district.
However, that communication does not appear to extend to coordinating testing policies.
If, as Saul Hinojosa observed, the majority of infected students are asymptomatic, teams from districts that do not mandate testing could be filled with carriers, raising the possibility that games could function as spreader events.
Hinojosa is the superintendent of Somerset ISD. He said the district requires all students to take rapid tests Mondays because “safety is paramount.” In his experience, regular testing is especially important because a high proportion — about 90 percent — of cases among students at Somerset are asymptomatic.
However, Hinojosa said, “Not everyone has that opportunity” for financial and logistical reasons. Somerset, a rural district in Southwest Bexar County, partnered with nonprofit Community Labs in 2020 to host a pilot program aimed at making the testing process fast, cheap and accurate.
Few other school districts have taken as rigorous an approach to testing.
East Central ISD Athletic Director Suzette Arriola described weekly testing as “something that’s highly recommended but not required for student-athletes.” The district offers weekly testing for staff and students through Community Labs.
Judson ISD and Southwest ISD adopted a similar stance.
Southwest ISD Athletic Director Peter Wagner said the district offers testing, and “we support it,” but it is not required. The show has to go on to some extent, he added. Districts won’t cancel games over a positive test.
“If your star player has COVID, then it’s pretty much treated like an injury,” he said. “We’re going to play.”
If Somerset represents one end of the testing spectrum, Schertzcibolo-universal City ISD represents the other. The district is comparatively hands-off.
We “don’t do routine testing of athletes or staff members,” SCUCISD Athletic Director Scott Lehnhoff. “We do have tests available for when an athlete or staff member has symptoms.”
The same is true of North East ISD. Student-athletes only test when they are actively exhibiting symptoms, Parker said.
If they do, “I’ll call the parents, and usually, I’ll say, ‘Hey, you might want to go get them tested, take them over to Sports Park (the North East ISD testing site) or whatever,’ ” he said. “But … we’re not doctors, so coaches really don’t say, ‘Hey, go get tested.’ It’s not really like that.”
Play has resumed
Still, in Woo’s experience, schools are “usually pretty conscientious about what happens” on the court or field.
“And so we see just as many transmissions, if not more, sometimes off the field — carpooling to practice or having a break together on the sidelines and not following precautions,” Woo said.
The risk of exposure to COVID-19 as a result of athletic competition has been present since the beginning of the pandemic. However, it was of lesser concern in 2020 and 2021 because competition occurred much more infrequently.
While few school districts fully suspended sports, many were not shy about invoking postponements and cancellations, to the extent schedules were disrupted on a seemingly daily basis.
The University Interscholastic League delayed the start of the 2020 fall sports seasons for Classes 6A and 5A until the first week of September, a month after they were supposed to begin.
San Antonio ISD and Edgewood ISD didn’t initiate fall sports practices until October 2020, citing a high number of cases in the communities they serve.
Mccollum High School in Harlandale ISD didn’t play its 2020 football season opener until two weeks before Thanksgiving because the team had to quarantine after several players tested positive.
Harlan High School of Northside ISD had to withdraw from the 2020 Class 6A playoffs before the first round for the same reason.
North East ISD paused its boys and girls basketball seasons for three weeks beginning in mid-december 2020 to allow rising COVID case rates to drop.
District 29-6A, comprised of Northside ISD schools, shortened its boys basketball season to eight league games because of quarantines. By comparison, athletic life in academic settings is relatively normal now.
The recent local surge in COVID-19 cases caused by the omicron variant did not significantly affect school sports schedules. While some varsity matchups were postponed and some for junior varsity teams were canceled entirely, most have proceeded as planned.
“We have only had to reschedule one varsity girls basketball game and cancel a handful of subvarsity games,” North East ISD’S Parker said. “Considering we host close to 100 events in our district per week, we are doing OK.”
When asked if he thought interscholastic sports were responsible for some new cases, Somerset’s Hinojosa replied in the affirmative.
“It’s really hard to tell, but I’m going to say yes,” he said, noting every member of the boys and girls varsity basketball teams had tested positive as of Feb. 7.
“To me,” he added, “that’s probably a result of them having close contact with themselves or other teams.”
Ramos’ family takes precautions to ward off infection, including masking and sanitizing. However, Ramos said she feels better about her son playing basketball knowing Somerset requires testing and communicates regularly about case rates. If it did not, she said, she would be somewhat more anxious.
“There’s more worry there,” she said.
But Ramos strongly feels sports should continue regardless of the possible risk. It offers “a little bit of normalcy” in notably abnormal times.
Early on in the pandemic, Ramos pulled her kids out of Somerset to home-school them. She soon noticed a downturn in their well-being that left her convinced of the importance of in-person education and social interaction.
“It kind of brings their mood down, the way they act. They get a little depressed,” she said. “When they’re out with their friends, they thrive a little bit more. … Their life is a little bit better. They’re just happier.”