DLS and others start summer football workouts
With coaches wearing masks and players separated into groups of no more than a dozen, outdoor conditioning for the 2020 high school football season began Monday at some Bay Area campuses.
Mind you, no one knows when the season will officially begin.
But after nearly three months of sheltering in place because of the coronavirus pandemic, coaches and players welcomed the change of scenery.
Clayton Valley Charter coach Tim Murphy, who led the Concord school to a state championship last fall, said his guys were definitely feeling it after their workout.
Hillsdale coach Mike Parodi spoke to how some kids have physically changed while others have not since he last saw them.
De La Salle coach Justin Alumbaugh was thankful just to be back with some of his guys.
“Overall, it was a great experience,” Alumbaugh said. “It was awesome to be out there.”
The guidelines are stringent. At De La Salle, the mask-wearing players met a designated coach in the parking lot, went through a series of questions and had tempera
tures checked before getting onto the field.
There, they removed the masks, were separated into four groups of 12 (11 players, one coach) and went through an hour of conditioning.
When they finished, those groups, including the coaches, departed, and four different groups arrived for their workout.
It was varsity only at this point for the Concord team.
“Hopefully we’re going to build some positive momentum,” Alumbaugh said.
Across the Bay in San Mateo, Hillsdale and its neighbors in the San Mateo Union High School District started conditioning Monday after getting the green light from superintendent Kevin Skelly two weeks earlier.
“I think technically the restrictions are looser than what we abided by today,” Parodi said. “We were doing a lot of things that we felt were important to keep doing. We want to make sure we do it right because we know that others are going to try to follow suit.”
Oak Grove athletic director Rick Huck said his football team will begin conditioning next week at a 12-player-to-one-coach ratio after schools in San Jose’s East Side Union High School District were cleared to get back outside.
“We’ll see what happens,” Huck said in a text.
James Logan football coach Ricky Rodriguez said Monday night that his team was returning to its Union City campus Tuesday for conditioning.
“The big phrase that you’re probably going to hear a lot from Alameda County coaches is social bubbles,” Rodriguez said. “That’s what it says in the guidelines.”
What that means, Rodriguez added, is 11 players working with one coach.
“In that social bubble, they cannot interact with other people in other social bubbles for up to three weeks,” Rodriguez said.
Since getting the OK on Saturday from his school officials, Rodriguez has been busy coordinating. He spent Monday on a Zoom video conference with his coaches to go over the protocols.
“These coaches need to understand that you’re going to be responsible for this group of kids for the next three weeks,” Rodriguez said. “We had to figure out a way to do it by position group. The kids are being coached by the coach they are going to be playing for come the fall.”
Most coaches had players working out on their own during shelter-inplace. But Murphy said that only goes so far.
“No matter how well they tried to stay in shape on their own, it was still hard for all of them,” the Clayton Valley coach said in a text. “I’d say they are only in 50% shape of what they would normally be at this time.”
Some schools, most notably those from the traditionally-strong West Catholic Athletic League, remain on the sideline.
WCAL commissioner Jolene Fugate said in a text Monday that schools in her league have collaborated with regards to guidelines.
“But since we are spread across three different counties, each school’s administration is working within their specific county guidelines regarding summer camps/conditioning,” Fugate said.
At Hillsdale, Parodi said there was a lot of “hooting and hollering” from the players when they stepped onto the field — and from the parents as they dropped them off.
“That’s what I enjoyed,” the coach said. “I enjoyed seeing them see each other again. I think the kids are just genuinely excited to be a little bit normal again. They’re hungry. They want to play football. They want to get back to seeing their friends.”