High School Sports — How Are We Doing So Far?
September 30, 2020 at 3:52 a.m.
High School Sports — How Are We Doing So Far?
By Roger Grossman-
If you were in favor of it starting, I asked you not to gloat. If you were opposed, I asked you to just hold your snarky, self-righteous comments until we see what happens.
Six weeks have passed since I made that request. It’s time for a mid-season checkup.
Kosciusko County schools have avoided missing football games, and games in pretty much all other fall sports, because of cases of COVID-19 within their rosters.
To the north, what could only be described as an uprising by residents of Elkhart County (those who love sports and those who just wanted to have in-class learning) saved sports at a lot of other things.
Cases here and there, games missed here and there, activities suspended here and there—but, to this point, there have been no catastrophic outbreaks that have made those on North Meridian Street in Indianapolis consider calling the whole thing off and keeping everyone home.
It makes you wonder, sorta, how the administrators at Indianapolis North Central, Whiting and Hammond who pulled the plug on all fall sports back in July are looking at this now. Again, I am no in any way criticizing them for the decision they made. I have to believe that they did what they thought was best for their students and staff with the information they had at that time.
And, as we have mentioned before, different areas of the state are different when it comes to COVID. Lake and Marion Counties were so much worse than Elkhart and St. Joseph Counties, and Marshall and Starke Counties had very low case counts.
That’s why I felt back in July that the IHSAA should not shut down all fall sports, because to cancel Argos soccer and Warsaw volleyball (for examples) because schools in bigger cities faced a different threat level would have made no sense.
I believe the rate at which fall sporting events in Indiana are occurring are still well-north of 95-percent, and I think that could only be described as a total success.
How?
I can’t speak for every athlete in every family in every school within 50 miles of Warsaw, but we can only assume that most athletes in most families in every school in the area are doing the things they have to do to keep the virus at bay and keep their seasons in-tact. They are wearing masks when they are not directly involved in activities, they are staying apart on the benches and sidelines, they are keeping their equipment cleaned and disinfected and they are staying away from off-the field-gatherings that often lead to no good anyway.
Good for them.
It does beg the question: “if they can do it…?” Never mind. I don’t want to go there.
Of course, people are trying to figure out what basketball season is going to look like. Decisions about how many fans can attend and all of that are still a ways off yet, but not that far off.
Some of that will be up to us adults.
Again, I promised I wouldn’t go there.
And can we say that Grace and the Crossroads League seem to be functioning well also. Not perfectly, but “not perfectly” is still better than “not at all” like their bigger school brethren.
We need to give that league and those schools a round of applause for being decisive and sticking to their decisions. The major colleges doing a collective U-turn from no fall sports at all to some college football just makes them look wishy-washy and weak.
You aren’t going to find that in the CL.
You may not agree with me on this thing or a lot of things. I never have seen that as a problem—we can not only still be friends, but we can be good friends.
But like so many things in our world (sports and otherwise), common sense wins the day. A little common sense matters so much, and it’s been applied to how high school and small college sports are operating this fall.
And it’s working.
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If you were in favor of it starting, I asked you not to gloat. If you were opposed, I asked you to just hold your snarky, self-righteous comments until we see what happens.
Six weeks have passed since I made that request. It’s time for a mid-season checkup.
Kosciusko County schools have avoided missing football games, and games in pretty much all other fall sports, because of cases of COVID-19 within their rosters.
To the north, what could only be described as an uprising by residents of Elkhart County (those who love sports and those who just wanted to have in-class learning) saved sports at a lot of other things.
Cases here and there, games missed here and there, activities suspended here and there—but, to this point, there have been no catastrophic outbreaks that have made those on North Meridian Street in Indianapolis consider calling the whole thing off and keeping everyone home.
It makes you wonder, sorta, how the administrators at Indianapolis North Central, Whiting and Hammond who pulled the plug on all fall sports back in July are looking at this now. Again, I am no in any way criticizing them for the decision they made. I have to believe that they did what they thought was best for their students and staff with the information they had at that time.
And, as we have mentioned before, different areas of the state are different when it comes to COVID. Lake and Marion Counties were so much worse than Elkhart and St. Joseph Counties, and Marshall and Starke Counties had very low case counts.
That’s why I felt back in July that the IHSAA should not shut down all fall sports, because to cancel Argos soccer and Warsaw volleyball (for examples) because schools in bigger cities faced a different threat level would have made no sense.
I believe the rate at which fall sporting events in Indiana are occurring are still well-north of 95-percent, and I think that could only be described as a total success.
How?
I can’t speak for every athlete in every family in every school within 50 miles of Warsaw, but we can only assume that most athletes in most families in every school in the area are doing the things they have to do to keep the virus at bay and keep their seasons in-tact. They are wearing masks when they are not directly involved in activities, they are staying apart on the benches and sidelines, they are keeping their equipment cleaned and disinfected and they are staying away from off-the field-gatherings that often lead to no good anyway.
Good for them.
It does beg the question: “if they can do it…?” Never mind. I don’t want to go there.
Of course, people are trying to figure out what basketball season is going to look like. Decisions about how many fans can attend and all of that are still a ways off yet, but not that far off.
Some of that will be up to us adults.
Again, I promised I wouldn’t go there.
And can we say that Grace and the Crossroads League seem to be functioning well also. Not perfectly, but “not perfectly” is still better than “not at all” like their bigger school brethren.
We need to give that league and those schools a round of applause for being decisive and sticking to their decisions. The major colleges doing a collective U-turn from no fall sports at all to some college football just makes them look wishy-washy and weak.
You aren’t going to find that in the CL.
You may not agree with me on this thing or a lot of things. I never have seen that as a problem—we can not only still be friends, but we can be good friends.
But like so many things in our world (sports and otherwise), common sense wins the day. A little common sense matters so much, and it’s been applied to how high school and small college sports are operating this fall.
And it’s working.
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