High school football is back (sort of). It’s up to the adults to keep it that way.
Take a deep breath and hold it, Idaho. High school sports are back.
The global coronavirus pandemic wiped out Idaho’s spring sports season in a drastic step whose only precedent is World War II. But fast forward to Friday and stadium lights across the state will flicker on as the country’s most popular sport — football — returns.
The virus hasn’t gone anywhere, of course. Idaho and the rest of the U.S. had all summer to get this pandemic under control, as countries across the world have done. Instead, we wasted it and saw the number of cases skyrocket.
Now the kids will pay.
The consequences are already rolling in. Teams in the Boise, West Ada, Nampa and Caldwell school districts all dangle in limbo, unsure if they’ll ever get to play.
Payette’s entire football team is in quarantine. Mackay’s too. So are the Canyon Ridge and Butte County volleyball teams. And those are just the ones we know about.
Maybe they’re just an overly cautious blip. Maybe they’ll return to play soon. Maybe they won’t.
Like everything else in this pandemic, no one really knows. But you can bet on this: More interruptions are coming.
The virus is spreading too rapidly and too widely to expect anything different. And we have no one to blame but the so-called adults, who spent the past six months bickering instead of taking action.
We politicized health advice. We shopped for opinions that let us do whatever we wanted. We treated face masks as a constitutional infringement on par with feeding, clothing and quartering a British soldier.
Now here we are again, picking and choosing which public health recommendations to follow with this weekend’s football schedule.
The Central and Southwest public health districts have advised schools not to play games while their county remains in the red category of community spread, the highest in Idaho’s back-to-school plan. So has the Idaho High School Activities Association.
Ada, Canyon, Payette and Washington counties stayed in the red category this week. Yet eight games will kick off Friday night in those counties.
Kuna is the only one of those eight not allowing fans, a mitigating step that puts the focus where it belongs — on the students.
The other seven will open the gates with various social distancing plans. None will require fans to wear masks.
We saw how well fans behaved last week at Pocatello’s Highland High, which seemingly did everything right. It required masks and marked dots on the stands 6 feet apart to encourage spacing. But an Idaho State Journal reporter noted fewer than half the fans wore masks and the school’s own photos showed adults largely ignored social distancing, proving once again even the most stringent plans are worthless without enforcement.
IHSAA Executive Director Ty Jones warned all summer he’s not worried about the sports themselves. Teams across the state have tied themselves in knots following safety protocols to get students back on the field. And they’ve largely succeeded.
“If we have to wear a mask, a dress, a tuba, I’ll do whatever we need to,” Emmett coach Rich Hargitt said. “… I’m willing to take whatever action we have to take to get kids back in class and back in sports.”
Instead, the worry lies with the parents who think the rules don’t apply to them. The ones who treat a high school football game like happy hour and a time to socialize. The ones already flaunting public health advice in their daily lives, creating an opportunity for the virus to spread into high school programs.
Make no mistake: I’m rooting for a season. I want sports to return. My paycheck depends on sports. But given the selfish actions we’ve all witnessed the past six months, you can find my hopes in the gutter.
The word “want” doesn’t matter anymore. “Can” and “should” do. No one wants to make all these sacrifices. But we should make them so we can safely return to our lives.
Washington Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle said it best last month. He correctly put the onus on sports returning where it belongs, on the public. And his words get more and more accurate by the day.
“Sports are like the reward of a functioning society,” he said in July. “And we’re trying to just bring it back, even though we’ve taken none of the steps to flatten the curve, whatever you want to say.
“We did flatten the curve a little bit, but we didn’t use that time to do anything productive. We just opened back up for Memorial Day. We decided we’re done with it.”
It’s easy to dismiss high school sports as frivolous. Academics should, and do, come first. But sports provide so much more than exercise and a distraction. They made me the man I am today.
They taught me how to work with others to achieve a common goal. They taught me my actions have consequences outside of myself. They taught me how to suck it up and do what’s necessary.
Meanwhile, I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I used the quadratic formula. Or to be perfectly honest, what it even does. (Sorry, Mr. Gaffney.)
We all want kids to learn those important lessons sports offer. So all of the adults need to give them a chance by following all the strategies doctors are begging us to listen to. Yes, all.
Stop blaming the schools for protecting their students and teachers. Stop blaming the media for accurately reporting the number of cases. Stop blaming whomever the latest crackpot conspiracy theory points the finger at.
Look in the mirror and take responsibility. Wear your mask, wash your hands and keep your distance from others. Not just in the stands, but every time you leave the house.
That’s the only way we’re going to get this virus under control and keep kids on the field.
Now exhale, and wish us all luck. We’re going to need it.
