Idaho wanted local control for high school sports. What it got was COVID-19 chaos.
Idaho’s state leadership lifted one strategy above all others this summer during the battle with the coronavirus — local control.
Gov. Brad Little stressed it. The State Board of Education emphasized it. Even the Idaho’s high school sports governing body built its return-to-play guidelines around it — only requiring schools to have a plan, not dictating what goes into that plan.
Well, we got local control. Now we all have to wade through the chaos.
Stay with me, if you can.
West Ada’s fall sports teams can play games this week. But Boise’s can’t.
Kuna’s teams are playing. But Bishop Kelly’s are not.
Vallivue and Middleton teams are suiting up. Nampa will start games next week. But Caldwell remains sidelined.
What’s the pattern? Simple.
The schools postponing games are following the advice of their local health districts and guidelines from the Idaho High School Activities Association. The schools playing are willing to roll the dice and play against that advice.
“No one wants to listen to what everyone else is doing,” Caldwell Athletic Director Jonathan Hallock said. “We’re the only school in Canyon County … that is adhering to what Southwest District Health is telling us. Props to our superintendent for doing that.”
The Central and Southwest health districts, which oversee Ada and Canyon counties, made their stance clear. Their medical experts said no one should play games against teams outside their school until their county drops into a lower category of community spread.
The state’s two largest counties both stayed in the red category this week, the highest under Idaho’s back-to-school guidelines. So their advice hasn’t changed. Central District Health even offered a straightforward statement after West Ada’s school board unanimously voted to resume games.
“Our guidance is that this type of activity is strongly discouraged and is not something that CDH would give a blessing to while in the red category,” Central District Health spokesperson Brandon Atkins told the Idaho Statesman.
The IHSAA guidelines also say no games should be played in the red.
But this uneven approach can’t come as a surprise. It’s not a bug in Idaho’s back-to-school plan. It’s a feature.
Idaho’s state government spent all summer running away from any sort of leadership as COVID-19 cases spiked. After asking health districts to approve or reject school reopening plans in the spring, the state sidelined them into an advisory role. Then Idaho passed the buck until it reached the lowest level possible — local school boards.
Bless the hearts of school board members, who ran for their seats because they care deeply about their communities. But years debating budget priorities and academic policies didn’t leave them prepared for a global pandemic or well-versed in epidemiology.
They must slog through all the ever-changing information on a new virus, just like the rest of us. They must try to make the best calls they can, just like the rest of us. But Idaho’s state government left them alone on an island and told them to figure it out, all in the name of local control.
While it’s true Boise is not Wallace, that does not excuse Idaho from any sort of clear and coherent plan. The Southern Idaho Conference schools could have collaborated on a regional plan for sports. They chose not to.
Now it truly is everyone for themselves. It’s a race to keep up with the Joneses with petty political rivalries rearing their heads in safety decisions.
A day after West Ada’s decision to play, Nampa School Board member Betsy Keller said she’s tired of Nampa always playing second fiddle to its wealthier neighbors to the east.
“We’re always at the bottom of the pile,” Keller said during Wednesday’s board meeting. “Now they’ve chosen to move forward, and once again, the Nampa kids are left behind.”
Nampa’s school board originally rejected a plan to start games next week 3-2. But after adding a clause that its superintendent would “look into” additional screening protocols, it passed on a 4-1 vote.
What are these additional screening protocols? Who will conduct them? When? How often?
Eh, after nine hours of debate over two days, they’ll figure that out later. The important thing is to start practices now, lest their teams fall behind. It’s stunning how quickly passionate pleas about the life-long educational lessons sports provide turn into complaints about how to compete in the win-loss column.
Don’t look for back-to-school plans to provide any sort of guide in this mess. West Ada students haven’t even started online classes but will play games. Bishop Kelly students are back in the classroom part time but can’t play. And Nampa acknowledged it can’t safely return students to the classroom until at least Sept. 21 but will turn on the stadium lights.
Even decisions that get made get quickly reversed. Bishop Kelly Athletic Director Tom Shanahan and football coach Tim Brennan told the Idaho Statesman on Monday the Knights would travel to Homedale this week. But by Wednesday, the school’s administration and board of governance changed their minds and canceled the game.
Shanahan said Bishop Kelly prioritized keeping students in the classroom, and a game this week created too much risk to that priority. The Knights will reevaluate next week.
“It’s hard because so much is unknown,” Shanahan said. “Our best-laid plans this week could all go up in smoke next week.”
Moscow pulled the ultimate 180. Three weeks after deciding travel posed too much of a risk and converting its high school sports programs into intramural ones, it reversed course and rejoined the Inland Empire League on Tuesday.
Still with me? I hope so.
The bottom line is athletes and parents around Idaho are quickly learning new words for local control — unfair and unequal.
Julie Christie, the mother of boys and girls soccer players at Timberline High, points out the Boise School District shut down summer workouts after discovering positive cases in its programs. Its teams have yet to hold full practices. They have yet to even host tryouts.
But West Ada never stopped its summer programs. It started practice Aug. 17. And it played its first games this week.
Boise and Meridian have grown together, making any boundary between their schools arbitrary in fighting a pandemic. So how do you explain this to athletes who have spent countless hours training for a game that’s supposed to be fair?
You can’t.
Meanwhile, Central District Health approved a plan Thursday night to reopen some Ada County bars as soon as next week.
“If Central District Health thinks it’s OK for them to open, then why are we drawing a bright line with the yellow and red (categories of community spread)?” Christie said.
“I understand it’s a pandemic. No one has dealt with this before. Everyone is doing the best they can. But we’re the only ones who are not playing.”
None of this passes the smell test. In no sane world should we even talk about opening bars before a high school sports team can practice or play. But this is the disjointed system our state leaders created.
So don’t blame local school boards for this anarchy. This was baked into Idaho’s plan from the start. The credit for this chaos belongs much higher up the ladder.
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 1:32 PM.
