FB in January?

By Ed Piper

At this point in the COVID-19 situation (June 9), there are signs pointing to a January kickoff of high school football in San Diego and California in general.

Eric Sondheimer, who has covered high school sports for the Los Angeles Times for years and is quite knowledgeable, reported that the CIF Southern Section's Commissioner, way back in mid-May, saw no way to a timely August 21 start to the prep football season (as originally scheduled long before the coronavirus hit).

The word being bandied about was, and is, that Viking footballers and their opponents will hit the gridiron for games come the turn of the year, in January 2021.

Basketball would follow the next month, February, under this proposed calendar.

More recently, San Diego officials "have drawn up more than one calendar", which is how they are phrasing things right now, and one scenario places football in the January slot. This is according to local sources.

The thinking, as I understand it, goes like this: School campuses are not going to open fully for students on August 18 or so. (School officials are looking at a hybrid Zoom-with-in-person instruction to begin the fall semester.) With four to six weeks necessary for preseason practice, football could not start in August, or probably even September.

Non-contact sports, namely tennis and golf, by their nature afford more accommodation to the state's requirement for social distancing. "Different sports may start on different dates," we are being told.

So, early in the semester in Fall 2020 we could see those two individual (while played in teams) sports in CIF competition. Boy, what news for coaches Darice Carnaje and Aaron Quesnell (head coaches in Viking tennis and golf, respectively)--boy, oh, boy, they might be saying, because the opportunity may be there but the uncertainty of the COVID era will come with it.

Where does that leave other fall sports? Girls water polo and field hockey are both close-quarter, contact sports bringing competitors into guarding, checking, and non-social-distancing stances on defense and offense. When will we see them, if ever, this fall? Good question.

If the general student body is not going to be allowed on campus full-time, then how can student-athletes be put in a separate category, as if their safety is assured by compromising restrictions that are kept for non-athletes?

Here is the way I'm thinking about it: I'm going to be substitute-teaching in the fall, hopefully (though in San Dieguito and Poway districts, not San Diego City), and this entire approaching school year 2020-2021 is going to be different. It is going to be a mishmash.

Don't freak out, Ed, I'm counseling myself. We have to get through the transition period necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a once-in-102-years pandemic. The virus will dictate how fast things will continue to reopen. We don't control that. The bug does.

So, get through 2020-2021, then we'll see more normalcy, hopefully for the 2021-2022 school year.

Many of my family members are public school teachers, and they are only so happy to end the full-time Zoom instruction they've been limited to this spring as the City Schools end the year today, June 9.

It has been a grind I haven't had to participate it, given I retired from classroom teaching five years ago. (I taught in the county's Juvenile Court and Community Schools program.) I don't feel their pain, but I have heard plenty about it in family get-togethers (even my Zoom birthday party, when that was still a novelty, back on April 19).

No state playoffs; get a CIF champion in each sport and division; shorter season; limited travel. Those are the things I've reading and hearing for the coming school year.

Hopefully, by the turn of the year, we will have gotten through the worst of it--though a vaccine is still a ways away. We will have weathered the "second wave" that L.A. is seeing right now that comes from reopening, more people out, more exposures, and as a result, more infections.

San Diegans have been fortunate. Our numbers have been relatively good. People have behaved themselves, overall, pretty well, practicing social distance and wearing masks when within six feet of non-household members.

The classroom this fall? My neighbor, a teacher at Lewis Middle School, says he's going to need more time between periods to wipe down his room. (Nobody sees a designated-wiper custodian coming to each room each block of the day to make things safe.) One of the state guidelines that came out yesterday suggest staying with one homeroom or teacher, to cut down on movement and exposure on campus.

Plan for more Zoom, though not as the whole package as it has been this spring. Some on-campus attendance. The amount will be dictated by the numbers of infections.

We're doing all this in the dark, because we still don't have mass testing, though testing is increasing. As a result, we don't know who is a carrier not exhibiting symptoms. Carriers, themselves, don't know unless they've been tested, which is not part of our daily experience so far.

So, when a kid shows up at my classroom door where I'm hopefully subbing in the fall at, say, Canyon Crest Academy, how do we know he's not going to spread virus? We don't. We can ask about symptoms (just like the nurse asked me yesterday outside Kaiser Clairemont before I was allowed to go inside to get a prescription). We can take temperatures (just like Wilhelmina did of me yesterday).

Then, if students report 14 days later that they got infected, County Health will direct that that class, or room, or cohort, or whatever be shut down, if it points to an outbreak.

Steve Miller's "Living in the USA". I propose "Living in the COVID (Era)." New stuff.

"Da-da-da-da-da-da-da, living in the COVID era."

By the way, this column focusing on the reopening of high school sports is not intended in any way to diminish the tragedy and seriousness of the 100,000 Americans who have already died from the coronavirus. Nor is my discussion meant to divert attention to the ongoing protests (now in their third week) over black people being killed at the hands of police officers, and demands for justice in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis after a police officer knelt on his neck as he was handcuffed and lying on the ground for eight minutes, 46 seconds.