WRESTLING RESURRECTED
Close contact sport brings extra challenges in pandemic
After spending most of the last 40 years coaching wrestling in some form or fashion, Jeff Howley had an experience last week unlike anything he’d ever faced. It’s safe to say he’d never like to go through it again.
“That was a stressful thing, yes,” Howley said while standing inside Perez-Shelley Memorial Gymnasium on Tuesday afternoon.
He’d just coached the St. Michael’s wrestling team through its season-opening meet, an abbreviated three-team exchange that ended less that two hours after it began. The fact that his Horsemen were even on the mat competing spoke volumes about how weird and emotionally draining the past week had been.
When dawn broke Thursday, the state was preparing to announce it had suspended the high school wrestling season over safety concerns stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. The state’s governing body for high school athletics, the New Mexico Activities Association, had no choice but to comply.
The NMAA passed that information along to its athletic directors, who then met with their coaches to tell them the news.
“With COVID going on the way it has been, that right there sounded like the death punch,” Howley said.
Within an hour or two of Howley talking to his team, the state reversed course and lifted the suspension, saying the season was free to resume Friday. By then, however, the damage had been done.
Word spread quickly among the athletes. Some coaches, like Howley and Moriarty’s Tim Means, met with their respective teams to tell them their seasons were over, to turn in their gear and plan for transitioning into the next sport or offseason conditioning.
“It’s been a lot of curveballs all at the same time, but the kids are dealing with it. They’re learning about adversity and we’re undefeated in that category; we’re undefeated against adversity,” Means said.
If there’s a sport under the NMAA’s umbrella that no one seems how to safely manage in the age of COVID-19, it’s wrestling. Close contact is what it’s all about.
In some ways, Howley said, wrestling is the one sport that others should be looking to if health and sanitation is the bottom line. For years, coaches and trainers have wiped down all surfaces and used antibacterial cleaning agents to keep skin free of infections.
“Long before anyone was worried about the coronavirus, we were out here keeping things clean from bacteria and things like MRSA,” Howley said. “All the things they’re doing in other sports, we’ve been doing that for a long time. They’ve had to change the way they do things but we, you know, we really haven’t changed much.”
Except masks, of course. As is the case with all sports, face coverings are mandatory.
And, yes, it has been an adjustment. Howley said he went to the store before Tuesday’s meet and bought a box of 100 new masks. The Horsemen went through at least 20 of them in the dual meet against Moriarty and Pojoaque Valley.
“It’s just something we all have to do, but it’s not easy,” Means said. “They fit pretty tight under the headgear, which is actually nice. They do break, though. Wrestling’s one of those things were you’re constantly having your face rub against something else so they’re bound to break or slip down over your nose or mouth.”
That, said the NMAA, is part of the problem. The association held a special board of directors meeting Monday morning to grant emergency powers to executive director Sally
Marquez to pass disciplinary action for offenders of the state’s COVID-19 protocols. For anyone not wearing masks, consequences could include steep penalties such as postseason bans, forfeits or school fines.
Howley said part of a Zoom call Friday with NMAA officials covered the expectations for wrestling coaches and athletes around the state. The message passed along to athletic directors was simple: With COVID-19 cases on the rise in high schools, what remains of the prep sports season is a serious and legitimate concern.
“I think everyone understands that and, yeah, hopefully we can get
all the way through the [wrestling] season without any stops,” Howley said. “We only have a month left but it already feels like it’s been a really long season.”
The state wrestling tournament is scheduled for May 27-29 in Rio Rancho, but everything is subject to change.
That includes, apparently, the day to day business of putting athletes on the mat.
“We’re supposed to be back out there [Thursday],” Howley said. “We’ll see. This is a year where we’re just trying to go day by day, you know?”