California settles with prep athletes, allowing indoor sports statewide
Basketball, volleyball, wrestling to be permitted at 14 /100K COVID case rate
Indoor sports activists earned a swift and sweeping victory Thursday in a legal settlement with the state of California that will remove the state’s additional restrictions on sports like basketball, volleyball and wrestling.
The settlement, which will allow all sports to operate under the same reopening tier using similar protocols to those in collegiate and professional play, came in response to a lawsuit filed last month in San Diego County by a pair of high school football players. Their attorney, Stephen C. Grebing, managing partner of Wingert Grebing of San Diego, said the settlement will allow all sports to compete in counties with adjusted case rates below 14 per 100,000, possibly as early as Friday.
“Indoors, (the requirements are) going to be pretty rigid,” Grebing said. “But they’re going to be allowed to play.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom declined to comment on the settlement when asked Thursday, but Dr. Mark Ghaly, the Secretary for Health and Human Services, said updated sports guidelines would be released in the coming days. Attorneys for return-toplay advocates said the settlement was still being finalized Thursday afternoon but that they had “been assured (Newsom) has signed off on the new guidelines released by CDPH this week.”
Student-athletes in all but a handful of California’s 58 counties will be allowed under state rules to play indoor sports. However, local counties and school districts will still have the option to opt-out of the agreement, Grebing said.
All indoor sports athletes will be subject to the same weekly testing requirement as high-contact outdoor sports in counties with case rates between 7 and 14 per 100,000 and will only be able to escape the requirement once a county reaches a sport’s original tier assignment. For example, basketball players must be tested weekly until their home county’s adjusted case rate falls below 1 per 100,000, the threshold for the yellow tier.
California has only committed to providing free testing for athletes and coaches in high-contact outdoor sports, as it outlined in new guidance this week. For newly approved indoor sports, athletes and coaches will have to schedule tests through their insurance providers or a private company that Grebing said agreed to provide free testing for all indoor sports participants statewide.
Let Them Play CA founder Brad Hensley said the organization had partnered with the 11:11 COVID Project, a company Hensley said does testing for WalMart and Disney employees, to provide free PCR tests to athletes across the state.
Masks will be required for all coaches and staff, as well as players while on the bench — but not during competition, Grebing said.
Up to four spectators per player were likely to be permitted, though the details were still being finalized, Grebing said.
The case in San Diego was filed on behalf of Nicholas Gardinera and Cameron Woolsey, two senior football players, who argued their rights to equal treatment were violated when professional and collegiate athletes were allowed to compete under certain protocols but not youth and highschool athletes.
Following an initial ruling in the athletes’ favor last month, similar lawsuits were filed by indoor-sports athletes in a number of other counties around the state, including San Francisco, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties in the Bay Area.
Dr. Kevin Shea, the director of Sports Medicine at Stanford Children’s, said indoor sports bring more risk than those played outdoors but gave his endorsement for at least a limited return of athletics inside.
“Outdoor sports (are safe) with maybe some constraints on what we do,” Shea said. “Indoor sports, I think we have to look carefully at them. You may have to limit the fans in the stands indoors. The athletes, when they’re participating at a high level, allow them to potentially have their masks off but not while on the sidelines.”
Sue Phillips, the girls’ basketball coach at Archbishop Mitty in San Jose, called it “wonderful news” and said she is “optimistic for the first time in almost a year.”
But the longtime coach, whose team had advanced to the Open Division state championship game when last season abruptly ended, added, “As you know, we still need to hear our directive from Santa Clara County powers that be. While excited as I am about the prospects of it all, I think we have to sit and let this digest for a minute and figure out what the next steps are.”