Better late than never
Shutdown over, players and coaches ready to play
As the calendar reaches midMarch, the timehonored rituals of sports endure. Spring training baseball, the push for NBA playoff positioning, NFL draft chatter … and the start of high school football?
“It’s been a really long time,” Cardinal NewmanSanta Rosa wide receiver Tsion Nunnally said, “so I’m just grateful to play again.”
“It’s like Christmas for a lot of our kids, especially the seniors. They’re super excited.”
Paul Cronin, Cardinal Newman coach
Nunnally could have been speaking for prep athletes throughout the Bay Area. Football season kicked off this weekend after a long pandemic delay, stretching from late summer through fall and nearly until the end of winter.
The season won’t look or feel the same — fewer games, severely limited crowds, players wearing masks on the sideline. But it’s a season, and that matters for teenagers reeling from a frustrating high school experience.
“It’s like Christmas for a lot of our kids, especially the seniors,” Cardinal Newman head coach Paul Cronin said. “They’re super excited.”
Cronin’s team had an advantage over many of its publicschool counterparts. The Cardinals convened in small groups starting last June, masked and
distanced for workouts two or three times per week, usually at a local park.
The dynamic for Cardinal Newman and other Bay Area schools changed March 1, when state guidelines allowed them to hold full practices on campus. Cronin noticed the smiles on his players’ faces during their first intrasquad scrimmage last Friday.
SkylineOakland head coach Joe Bates, similarly, enjoyed the end of constant text messages from his players, asking whether they would have a season. Now, as Bates pulls his car into the parking lot 45 minutes before practice each day, “damn near the whole team” is waiting for him to open the gate.
“That never happens,” Bates said. “I’m usually dealing with late kids.”
His rituals are different in this pandemic spring, no question. Bates studies his clearance list, conducts temperature checks, monitors the small groups taking turns changing in the locker room, puts out sanitizer and makes sure all his players are wearing masks.
He also scheduled team photos before Skyline’s first game, just in case the season gets sidetracked.
The Titans have only four games on tap, though Bates hopes to add one more. Another illustration of the oddity of playing amid a pandemic: One of Skyline’s top players, running back/cornerback Kweke Garth, lost his passion for football during the layoff and decided to give up the sport to pursue a real estate program at a local community college.
That doesn’t change the anticipation among Skyline’s remaining players as they prepare for their March 27 opener against FremontOakland.
“They’re excited, they’re ecstatic, they’re pumped up, they’re out of shape,” Bates said, without skipping a beat.
At least Bates and other Bay Area coaches don’t need to worry about holding practice on snowcovered fields. That was the uncommon scene when South Tahoe High returned to practice last week.
Louis Franklin, the school’s head coach and athletic director, posted videos on social media of his players running through drills on a blanket of white powder. Franklin said a local company removed more than 3 feet of snow before practice resumed March 1 — a striking contrast to the usual preseason practices in late August and early September.
Then, on Wednesday, it snowed again. South Tahoe coaches planned to work on their kickoff coverage that day, but they scrapped the plan and let the players prance around and have fun in the snow.
That was especially welcome, Franklin said, because many of his players struggled with the emptiness and isolation caused by the pandemic. South Tahoe’s varsity roster fell from 40 players to 26 in the past year.
“At least we’re sending them away with some great memories,” Franklin said. “I’m pretty sure they’ll remember the snow practices the rest of their lives.”
This whole saga resonates in a distinctive way for Cardinal Newman’s senior class. Those students were freshmen in the fall of 2017, when the Tubbs Fire — the most destructive wildfire in California history — ravaged Wine Country, killing 22 people and destroying more than 5,600 structures.
The fire also burned down half of Cardinal Newman’s campus and the homes of five varsity football players. Students at the school scattered to four parishes in the area to take classes for several months.
Then, in 2018, smoke and poor air quality from the Camp Fire prematurely ended Cardinal Newman’s football season. The pandemic essentially wiped out spring sports last year and left students taking classes remotely most of 202021.
“It’s been kind of crazy,” Nunnally said. “I haven’t really had a normal year of high school.”
Now, finally, Nunnally — one of the Bay Area’s top college prospects, bound for Washington State — will savor at least a few weeks of seminormalcy. Cardinal Newman planned to scrimmage Friday against Vacaville, then will open its season March 19 against Windsor.
The Cardinals are scheduled to play five games, about half of a typical season. There will be no playoffs. It’s strange and surreal and not exactly ideal, but it’s a lot better than what many Cardinal Newman players expected.
“Early in the quarantine, it really felt like we weren’t going to get anything,” Cardinal Newman senior John Headley said. “Now we have something and it’s pretty cool. We have our final shot.”