NEW ORLEANS – As a coach in a sport where social distance is impossible, Andrew Nicola said he was doing everything he could to keep the students of his wrestling team safe during the pandemic – following the rules of restricting spectators, disinfecting mats between the rounds and requiring wrestlers to turn into clean singlets between each match.
So he was alarmed in January when his team from Brother Martin High School in New Orleans arrived at the Louisiana Classic wrestling tournament to find crowds of spectators close together, and many were not wearing masks.
Mr. Nicola angrily demanded that tournament organizers kick out the people who didn’t follow the rules. “I went to them personally and said, ‘You have to fix this, but it’s not resolved,’” he recalls. “I was very upset because I knew it was going to cost us.”
Less than a week later, more than 20 students, staff and spectators who attended the tournament had tested positive for the coronavirus, an outbreak that prompted Louisiana sports officials to suspend the rest of the regular wrestling season.
A year after the coronavirus crisis, athletic fields and darkened gymnasiums in schools closed for the first time, students, parents, coaches and officials struggle to weather the challenges of youth sport, balancing concerns about the transmission of the virus against the social, emotional and sometimes financial benefits from competition.
For months, a jumble of rules and restrictions that vary by state and sport has forced players and coaches to adapt. The roll-out of vaccines and warmer spring temperatures have prompted some states to lift mask mandates and relax guidelines, but health experts continue to push for caution in young athletes amid the spread of potentially more contagious variants of the virus.
Officials have linked Covid-19 outbreaks to rinks in Vermont, Florida and Connecticut, while a January report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that two high school wrestling tournaments in Florida resulted in nearly 80 people being infected were caught with the virus, including an adult who died. According to the state health department, in Minnesota at least 68 cases have been associated with participants in school-sponsored athletics and club athletics, including hockey, wrestling, and basketball, since the end of January.
In some cases, the spread did not occur during matches, but at team-related gatherings. Recent data from the NFL and the CDC found that shared transportation and meals were the most common causes of the virus spreading among sports teams.
“Now is not an appropriate time to invite people to a post-game pizza party,” said Dr. Susannah Briskin, associate professor of pediatric sports medicine at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland.
Dr. Briskin is central to the debate about youth sports – both at work and at home. She helped write recent recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics that young people wear face masks, both during games and when traveling with teammates. (The group allowed some exceptions for contact sports where masks can be a choking hazard, and individual sports where athletes can keep a safe distance outdoors.)
But when her 11-year-old son’s football league mandated an inner mask after the association’s guidelines were published in December, Dr. Briskin: “They had so much backlash, they pulled back and made it optional.”
His club kept the requirement, so they let him play on. And her teenage daughter’s school basketball team needs masks during practice, she said – although not during games on the field, but her daughter wears one anyway. Both of her children learn at a distance, said Dr. Briskin, and needed an athletic outlet.
“It was very important to get them to do social activities and exercise, but they tried to encourage this in the safest way,” she said.
Many experts agree that youth sports are important for both physical and mental health. That means school athletics has continued in some places, even when students are learning virtually. And some schools and sports associations, including those in Ohio and New Jersey, have also relaxed academic admission requirements for student athletes. In Kentucky, a bill in the State Senate would allow students to retake a year of classes to make up for academic losses, while high school athletes would also be given a fifth year to qualify.
Audrey Mann, 17, a New Orleans high school, hasn’t been in a classroom since March. She chose to keep a student at bay even after the town’s school buildings reopened in the fall, before closing again during a spate of business and reopening in recent weeks.
But there was no way she could give up athletics, Audrey said. She played volleyball and soccer in the fall, and softball and tennis now fill her afternoons after school, followed by club soccer practice that lasts until 8:30 p.m. result of limitations of the fall pandemic.
“Sports is a huge mental thing for me,” said Audrey, who averages 4.0 points and is the captain of her three varsity teams. ‘I have to exercise and go. It’s the only way I’ve been social in the past year. “
For parents, the potential impact of athletics on their children’s future often played a role in decisions about playtime.
Willandria Middleton, a high school librarian in Montgomery, Ala., Was concerned about the consequences of banning high school football from playing on her son, William, 17. “Everyone was scared, like, ‘Oh my God, if he gets it, he could die ‘, ”she said. “But I thought, well, to stop him – would that kill him too, if he can’t play what he loves?”
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Her son’s high school is more than 80 percent black, and she said she agreed with William’s coaches that football provided much-needed structure for him and his teammates. “A lot of our young black boys who play football here in Montgomery, that’s all they have to do,” said Ms. Middleton.
There were virus cases at William’s school and at least four school district employees, including one of his coaches, died after the battle with Covid-19. But the football team ended the season without any breakout – perhaps, William said, because his head coach required players to wear masks everywhere and forbade them to attend in-person classes. “If you weren’t at practice or competitions, he wouldn’t want you out.”
For William, the pandemic season has paid off. In December, he received a football scholarship to a junior college in New Mexico. “I just wanted to use my talent so my mom wouldn’t have to pay to go to college,” he said.
However, some children and families made difficult decisions to sit all year round.
Tyler Bihun, 18, a high school in Bloomington, Illinois, and his twin brother played hockey together for about 13 years. But they decided to stay off the ice after seeing opposition to face masks at their local indoor ice rink. “We just didn’t think it was very safe, and we didn’t want to expose our parents,” Tyler said.
The brothers also opted for distance learning, despite the option of returning to class two days a week.
Looking back, Tyler said he was not sorry. The travel team he used to play had a Covid-19 outbreak that forced training and game cancellations, and one of his former teammates was seriously ill for two weeks, he said. “I miss hockey, but giving up was definitely the right decision.”
In Louisiana, where the wrestling season was disrupted by the outbreak of the tournament but the state championship was still held, athletes and coaches were forced to adapt to a slew of safety protocols. Handshakes were prohibited, and social distance and face masks were required when students did not participate.
Julie Castex, a New Orleans clinical nurse specialist who deals with infectious disease research, said her son, Ethan, 18, struggled during his senior year in high school amounted to a “ risk-benefit ratio. ” The family eventually decided it would do too much damage to his mental health if he kept him off the mats.
“It’s scary because you’re putting your son in a very contact sport,” she said. And while you look at the data and think it’s probably going to be fine at his age, there’s a risk. But everything else was basically taken away in his senior year, and wrestling is pretty much all he had to do, that was normal. “
Eddie Bonine, the executive director of the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, said officials have worked hard to protect students and staff, but acknowledged that there have been bumps in the way.
“Our schools have done their best, and it doesn’t always work well,” said Mr. Bonine, adding, “As soon as people come in the door, some masks go off.”
Still, he said the state’s overall record was good, and although more than 4,700 people attended the wrestling championship at the end of February, no cases had been reported. “We are learning how to live with this virus,” he said.