SF joins effort to get prep sports going again
Bay Area high school sports have been out of competition since the pandemic began nearly a year ago. With coaches, parents and athletes trying to work with local government officials to get back on the field, one private entity offered a helping hand.
The San Francisco 49ers are helping to organize voices and provide any data and resources needed to get kids back into sports.
“We’re trying to be a conduit to expand the conversation,” said Jared Muela, the director of the 49ers’ PREP program and fan engagement.
Starting this summer, the NFL team has organized Zoom meetings with local high school football coaches, including Serra High School football head coach
Patrick Walsh, James Logan head coach Ricky Rodriguez and Valley Christian’s Mike Machado.
Right now, California’s colored-tier system dictates which sports are allowed to be played. And with most of the Bay Area sitting in the most-restrictive purple tier, coaches are desperate to find data from other states and entities that they can use to convince Gov. Gavin Newsom and local health officials that high school and youth sports should be exempt from the tiers.
The 49ers are in on the effort to track down the data.
“They’re the top of the food chain for football, particularly in Northern California,” Walsh said in a phone conversation. “To have one of the 32 NFL franchises supporting us, the coaches, and listening to us and doing what they can is great. It would be great if
the Rams or Chargers were on board. These kids are future Niners, potentially.”
In any other year unencumbered by a pandemic, 49ers PREP puts on football programs — from junior training camps to professional player mentorships — for youth athletes. With those programs shut down since last March because of the pandemic, the organization wanted to find another way to help kids.
Muela and his colleagues were some of the first people to organize frenzied coaches looking to organize their efforts.
“While they’re looking to other coaches and leagues around the country, we wanted to make any connections we could to collect data,” Muela said. “Not only to understand states and counties who had programs playing successfully but learning from their pitfalls or challenges.”
The 49ers have the advantage of national reach.
Muela’s team brought representatives from the NFL over Zoom to explain the approved safety protocols that helped the league put on a full season. High schoolers don’t have the luxury of everyday testing like NFL teams, but they can use tips on how to practice a contact sport in a socially-distanced world.
“They couldn’t even play football in Santa Clara; they felt the pain of this, too,” Walsh said. “The sad thing is we can’t pick up our team and move it to Arizona.”
California high schools are running out of time this school year to get kids competing again. Walsh says the 49ers are the only outside entity that offered any help or guidance to figure out how to do it safely.
“We want to play a role to put everyone in the position to make a good decision,” Muela said. “It’s about getting kids back out safely. No one wants kids out of sports. It really is coming up with a method to do that. It’s definitely a big deal, there’s a lot of kids wanting to get back and not sure what to do.”