High school coaches frustrated over another COVID season but optimistic
Jody Wright paused for a moment, thinking about the summer and how COVID-19 numbers were dropping daily.
All things looked good for high school sports in the fall. Life appeared to be getting back to normal.
“That's what is harder right now,” said Wright, a member of the TSSAA Board of Control and athletic director at Knoxville Fulton while also serving as the boys basketball coach. “I think we all thought this was in the rear mirror.
“Then you started seeing in July cases going back up again. The stark reality is this is here for a while. It may be here for the remainder of our lifetime. I don't know. That's the discouraging thing because the last yearand-a-half has been so hard.”
COVID-19 cases have spiked with the arrival of the Delta variant. It's infecting more younger people, including students.
Tennessee teens are returning to sports as the virus surges across the state, including in their general age group. While the state government does not release virus data specific to teenagers, infections are accelerating among those between ages 11 and 20, according to the Tennessee Department of Health.
Tennessee is now reporting an average of about 900 infections per day in this age group – an increase of more than 800% in just the past month. Infections in this age group are now at the highest levels since late December, when the virus was at its winter apex.
The state is reporting nearly 4,500 new infections per day among all age groups, The Tennessean reported earlier this week. More than 17% of all tests conducted in the past week were positive. About 2,450 people are now hospitalized with the virus.
The Delta variant has provided a new wrinkle in coaches' COVID-19 playbooks at a time when fewer man
dates such as social distancing and masks exist at the majority of schools.
“Last year, everything was new to us,” Oakland football coach Kevin Creasy said. “There was not a lot of information on how contagious or dangerous this would be. I think over a year-and-a-half, we’ve learned more about COVID-19, but the Delta variant has caught everybody’s attention again, so we’re still very cautious.”
Tennessee high school fall sports kicked off this week at its regularly scheduled time in the midst of the new surge. High school football kicks off statewide Friday. At least five Week 1 games have been canceled or postponed due to COVID-19 cases in schools.
“COVID hasn’t gone away,” Rossview football coach Todd Hood said. “Talking with other coaches, it definitely hasn’t gone away and we still must be diligent and smart in how we move forward. But things, overall, seem better as far as getting back to a normal routine.”
Unlike the 2020-21 school year, there are no mandates by the TSSAA for its member schools to wear masks or socially distance with reduced crowds at games.
The high school athletic association has chosen to leave that for school systems to decide. The TSSAA has recommended its member schools to follow the CDC’S recommendations if they do not have a policy in place.
“Our decision is more on the fact that they changed so often last year,” TSSAA assistant director Mark Reeves said. “The only way that our schools can keep up and we can keep up is what the recommendations should be is to refer to the CDC.
“It’s not practical for us to administer all the different changes. The school systems themselves because they are so much more diversified in terms on what their policies are going to be compared to last year, we’re going to give them the autonomy to make those decisions.”
Coaches, schools learned how to deal with COVID-19
With strict guidelines in place a year ago, coaches learned what worked best for them and what may carry over.
Some may still require their athletes to wear masks. Others will leave that decision to their athletes.
“Last year I made my girls wear masks during practice and games,” Houston volleyball coach Becky Pendleton said. “This year we’re not doing it. We still sanitize the ball.”
Pendleton also has asked her athletes to stay at home if they don’t feel right. She doesn’t question them.
“It used to be ‘Oh if you don’t feel well, you still have to come to practice.’ Now I’m like if you don’t feel well don’t come near me,” she said. “Things just have changed.”
Despite last year’s TSSAA mandates no longer being in place, Maryville football coach Derek Hunt said his program remains vigilant with their own policies. Coaches still reduce how much time football players can be in the locker room.
“We don’t use squirt bottles anymore,” Hunt said. “That’s been the biggest transformation for us, how we gave water to the players. We’ve gone back to the 1990s water trough system (for practices) and individual cups (during games) for players. We don’t plan on going back (to water bottles).”
At CPA, soccer coach Tom Gerlach is trying to “maintain a sense of normalcy while following the protocols the school and state are enforcing.”
Sure, he has some rules. Players have their own practice bib, a vest they can pull over during practice to help tell offensive and defensive players apart when scrimmaging. But Gerlach and his staff are not as controlling as they were a year ago.
“We’re really just trying to focus this year on getting as much as we can and embrace those moments because it could be taken away at any time,” he said. “We don’t want to live in that fear again.”
Contributing: Cecil Joyce, Brett Kelman, George Robinson, Joe Spears, Khari Thompson
Reach Tom Kreager at 615-259-8089 or tkreager@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Kreager.