‘Irreparable damage’: High school sports back on pause amid Sacramento teacher strike
High school sports are on pause again in Sacramento City Unified School District, only this time it has nothing to do with COVID-19 issues.
SCUSD closed its schools Wednesday morning, from elementary to high school, as teachers and school staffers went on strike, many of them in picket lines in front of their empty campus.
This means no one is in class and no students are engaged in anything extracurricular after school, be it the band, baseball or track and field. Student athletes in the district cannot even practice, a blow to the six high schools that field junior varsity and varsity teams during the busiest sports seasons of the academic year.
Those high schools are Luther Burbank, Hiram Johnson, Kennedy, McClatchy, Rosemont and West Campus, and the spring sports schedules clog up a week with baseball, golf, diving, softball,swimming, tennis, volleyball and track and field.
All told, SCUSD sports programs include about 2,100 student athletes. At McClatchy, which opened in 1937 and is the oldest school in the district, there are nearly 100 students on the track and field team alone. There are 20 on the varsity baseball team that is unbeaten at 9-0, highly ranked by The Bee and features one of the top players in the country in Major League Baseball prospect Malcolm Moore, who will attend Stanford if he doesn’t sign a big-league contract after graduation.
Coaches and athletic directors from SCUSD said they could not talk on the record to The Bee about the strike, or even their concerns about student athletes not being involved in sports after the district imposed tight restrictions on sports amid the coronavirus pandemic. SCUSD coaches cannot speak on the topics because all coaching stipends are tied to the teachers’ union. One SCUSD athletic director said on a condition of anonymity because they were breaking the rules, “It’s heartbreaking. We’re starting to get back to normal after COVID, and then this happens.”
Games, matches or meets with SCUSD programs will be forfeited to schools outside the district. Those competitions are held in the Metropolitan Conference and the Greater Sacramento League, both of which include SCUSD programs along with others in the area.
The strike led to a domino effect on schools in neighboring districts. Florin High, for example, is a member of the Elk Grove Unified School District and competes against SCUSD members. Athletic director Bill Kapp now has a handful of sports schedules that suddenly have a lot of holes. He is an administrator with few answers for his coaches and students.
“It’s a hard thing to explain to our kids here,” Kapp said. “Some of these games won’t be made up. There may not be time. It’s not the fault of the kids in the SCUSD, or our kids or any kids. It’s disappointing. It’s not fair to the kids.”
Kapp added, “If this strike lasts more than a week or two, it’ll create irreparable damage to so many kids. They’re getting shorted. Everyone wants the kids to play. If it’s about the kids, let them play and let the adults work this out.”
Laguna Creek athletic director Jon Ussery also has a school in the EGUSD and competes in the Metro League with SCUSD members.
“Two years ago, spring sports were the first affected by COVID, and we lost those seasons,” Ussery said. “Last spring, all the sports were pushed into the spring and kids had to pick and choose which sports to play, and now we have this. We’re canceling games now because adults in that district can’t make decisions. I don’t know all the details of the strike but I know it’s hurting a lot of kids.”
Ussery added, “Coaches ask me what they can do. Nothing. Our hands are tied. Here’s my issue. We have a Metro League golf tournament on Monday. What am I going to do? We’ll have River City, Monterey Trail, Laguna Creek and Grant show up but what about McCatchy, Burbank and Kennedy of that district? They’ll have to forfeit. We’re going to hurt the other schools? We can’t reschedule because the course is already reserved for us. It just hurts the kids.”
This story was originally published March 23, 2022 at 1:21 PM.