Without proper guidelines from the state, hope that high school sports season could begin official practices as scheduled in December was waning. For schools in Santa Clara County, hope grew even thinner with a new, strict health order that bans sports for three weeks.
Amid a severe surge of COVID-19 cases, the county found it necessary to bar all teams in the county — from the San Francisco 49ers to the Stanford Cardinal and San Jose State Spartans to all prep and youth sports — from participating in practices or games that require contact.
While professional and collegiate teams make plans to reroute seasons in progress, the path forward for Santa Clara County schools that have been waiting months for protocols to proceed with the season still has no starting point.
“I don’t think it changes much for us,” Central Coast Section Commissioner Dave Grissom said Saturday. “Until the guidelines change, we couldn’t have done anything with contact or any sports, anyway.”
They know, at least, they can scratch those Dec. 14 practices off their schedule.
“You go through the stages of grief — denial, anger — you’re going through all of it,” Palo Alto High School head football coach and athletic director Nelson Gifford said in a phone conversation.
“But as a coach, as an athletic director, you have to be optimistic because your kids need that. We’re always teaching kids to be ready to face obstacles outside of their control, and this is a huge obstacle outside of their control.”
While the new mandate will test all hope, it also provided the first bit of clarity for flustered school and league officials, coaches and parents who’ve spent the last months juggling risk and reward in deciding how and when to let their kids participate in team conditioning.
Stacey Sampson Chase has been growing tired of the burden while trying to get her two 11-year-old twins, Ethan and Peyton, and a five-year-old daughter, Lulu outdoors as much as possible.
“In all honesty it’s a little bit of relief,” Sampson Chase said in a phone conversation. “The numbers have gotten so bad that I appreciate the choice being taken out of the hands of parents. As much as anybody loves sports — I love watching my kids play sports and coaching sports — it’s our family’s life. But safety and health are so much more important.”
Nothing can take the place of organized sports, but Sampson Chase’s family has grown to accept the circumstance. Ethan and Peyton are twins, natural competitors, and have taken up skateboarding as a new passion to fulfill the competitive edge lost from having missed out on their travel baseball, flag football, travel soccer and club field hockey seasons. They’re happier being safe than sorry.
Sampson Chase took that same approach to her field hockey coaching duties at Del Mar High School in San Jose. The seasoned coach of 20 years delegated some responsibilities to her team captains, urging them to hold virtual conditioning as a team. The county’s new mandate was the most clarity she’s gotten throughout the pandemic’s chaos.
“There’s so much gray area and ways to get around restrictions in place. I had just been looking for someone to definitely say, ‘This is how it has to be,’” she said.
She added: “I would be much more conflicted if I was the mother of two high school seniors. I don’t know how I would feel but I would feel like their futures are being taken. Not that my kids are going to be pro athletes, but they would feel much more a sense of loss.”
High school seniors like Will Schweitzer are trying to keep those fears at bay. Schweitzer, a defensive end from Los Gatos High School committed to Notre Dame for the 2021 season, is still holding hope that the Wildcats’ 42-7 defeat at the hands of Cardinal Newman in the state playoffs in December 2019 won’t be the last time he’ll suit up with his high school teammates.
Schweitzer has Notre Dame on the horizon: the Irish are always in contact, he says, noting they’re “as committed to me as I am to them.” But he worries for some of his Los Gatos teammates who, without a season, may not get the Division I opportunity he thinks they deserve. He worries, too, about the mental ramifications a prolonged hiatus may have on his and his teammates’ play. Like most schools in the county, he and his teammates have been conditioning all summer and fall — but he still understands pad-on-pad competition keeps his football IQ sharp.
Santa Clara County said no contact sports for the next three weeks. That practices could begin after that time keeps his hope alive that those fears won’t come true.
“Thats the only thing keeping us going now is the hope that there’s games at some point,” Schweitzer said in a phone conversation. “It’s crazy, I’ll look at my one-year-ago memories on Snapchat. I miss those chills before games and after games. Between the lines, that’s a total fraction of the season. I miss being with the guys, the brotherhood, and hard work we put into get to those games.”
School officials aren’t sure that student athletes will have that chance again this year. Even if Santa Clara County’s mandate provided momentary clarity, unnerving uncertainty looms still. Some coaches across California have urged local officials to give them the green light to play, attesting that the risk of keeping kids sidelined is greater than the risk of playing. With cases rising, they’ve done the opposite in hopes of stopping the spike from growing even larger.
According to the county’s coronavirus dashboard, those under 19 make up the third-largest share of cumulative cases (17.4%), trailing only 20-29-year olds (20.3%) and people in their 30s (18.4%).
Gifford, who also teaches at Palo Alto, can’t help but wonder why schools have to play this tortuous waiting game at all.
“I have these discussions with friends in education all over the place. When schools closed in March there should have been a national mobilization to open schools again,” he said. “Build structures outside, testing, all the things business are doing. We knew we wanted kids to come back to school, why isn’t that happening? It feels like we’re just waiting for things to get better as opposed to being proactive.”
His school’s superintendent is engaged in frequent conversations with Santa Clara County’s public health office — the message relayed is that the county is dealing with a multitude of complexities that make a clear road map near impossible to craft. So, even if there are some answers now, there’s much left unanswered. The county mandate doesn’t clarify if the conditioning training most districts in the county have been conducting would still be allowed. Kids are turning out in record numbers for conditioning — can teams still work out together in pods?
“Something is better than nothing. At this point, we’ll take whatever we can get,” Gifford said. “You want to give the kids something. It is their opportunity to play, and for the vast majority for kids, this is their only outlet.”
