Summer conditioning starts as area high schools work together amid COVID-19 summer
John Wiley had not greeted his football players outside texting, emails or Zoom online video sessions since early March — before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered schools and a lot of the state.
So imagine the glee of the Christian Brothers High School coach this week when he ran into scores of student-athletes on campus. He greeted each with a smile, though hidden by a cloth face guard, and a fist bump. The hugs in abundance will come soon enough, Wiley figures, when social distancing isn’t such an ingrained part of our thinking.
Christian Brothers is following the same guidelines of summer sports conditioning as other schools across the state. Small groups of athletes in football, volleyball and cross country are working with coaches in drills, unlike seasons past where large groups packed in for such experiences.
Social distancing drills are the first signs of the effort to get students reengaged in extracurricular activities while mindful that COVID-19 remains a threat to shutter it all down again should the numbers spike up alarmingly.
For now, the sense for area coaches is universal: it’s a start.
“It’d been so long since I’ve seen these guys,” Wiley said, “that it was, ‘Oooh, he got taller,’ or, ‘Oooh, he got bigger.’ It’s just great to see everyone. To see their smiles makes it all worth it.”
Wiley added, “Patience is the key word that we all must understand as we try to get back into all of this. More than sports, getting together like this is for the experience, to be a teenager, to be with friends, and to do so while being smart and safe.”
The challenges of distancing
The challenge is profound — social distancing in a sport such as football, where that is not entirely possible. But distancing is happening now in summer drills where footballs, helmets and pads remain stored away until official practices start later in the summer. Summer drills are designed to get athletes in shape, to be together — running, sprints, bear crawls and discussion.
No area schools are allowing their athletes to dress in locker rooms. There are no in-class skull sessions. All drills and meetings are outdoors. Students and coaches are encouraged to shower at home immediately after practice, to wash hands regularly, to wear masks. The other norm: check-in stations outside the playing fields that include jugs of hand sanitizer, masks, sign-in paperwork and a temperature check.
At Christian Brothers on Thursday, there were more grins than frowns under the unrelenting late-afternoon sun on a hot surface. Players were glad to pour sweat on the school’s sparkling new turf within a spectacular home stadium.
“It’s great to be out here with the guys,” said Nate Smith, a CB linebacker and a 4.6 student who says his dream school is “MIT to study aerospace.”
Smith added, “We’re eager to train, to do it the right way. We can do our part to by being smart. Before this week, a lot of us were sad and lonely without a chance to be together. We’re excited to have a season.”
Season of hope
But will there be a season?
There will be if the COVID-19 concerns ease, meaning a decline in positive-test numbers. There won’t any seasons in any city or towns if there are a concerning number of positive tests from football rosters or even on a campus. Coronavirus is a highly contagious disease.
Said Pleasant Grove football coach Matt Costa, “If we get a football season, it won’t matter who wins or loses, it’ll be a victory to even have a season. We really don’t know if we’ll actually be able to play games. For now, coaches just want to get their kids in shape, to get together. I know I miss our guys, I just want to be around my dudes. Not being around kids is mentally taxing for a lot of us.”
Said CB athletic director Dale Milton, “We all agree that to thrive, kids have to be active, and not just sports but music, theater, dance, rallies.”
Control the controllables
The 50th Holy Bowl between rivals Christian Brothers and Jesuit is set for September at Hughes Stadium, where a packed stadium of some 20,000 would be expected if this were any normal season. If you think of the Holy Bowl over the decades, the prevailing thoughts are of the spirited crowds, people young and old comparing lettermen’s jackets and previous scores.
But no one is thinking that far ahead. The focus is on today and tomorrow.
“Control the controllables,” is how Jesuit coach Marlon Blanton put it while watching his Marauders in workouts. “That’s one of the things sports teaches you — control what you can control. Everyone wants to belong to something. It’s important to all of them.”
As Milton of CB puts it, “We have to do baby steps. Start with crawling, then walking then running. We have to all be smart and safe about this.”
Sportsmanship at its best
Natomas Unified School District Superintendent Chris Evans has been a driving force in uniting area coaches and administrators in this cause, and he has been outspoken about the value of high school sports.
Evans worked the phones, emails and Zoom meetings to share ideas, hopes and concerns.
“It was super collaborative,” Evans said. “We all worked with a lot of great folks, working together. We old coaches, we have those competitive juices still, and this was a perfect example of sportsmanship and being on the same page. It was sportsmanship at its best.”
By the end of this month, all area school districts expect to have some sort of plan in place for summer conditioning, a slow return to campuses in an era when everyone is used to fast-forward action. Elk Grove Unified programs on Monday will have a session with coaches in regards to protocols. El Dorado County schools on Monday have a Zoom meeting with coaches to go over plans with the idea of starting drills Tuesday.
The California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for prep sports, will announce by July 20 what its fall sports calendar will look like. The CIF does not influence state schools on when and how to do summer drills.
Summer drills are in place with the idea of limitations.
“We as coaches and administrators have to make sure that we don’t let the student-athletes do too much too soon,” Jesuit athletic director Hank Weinberger said. “We have to be smart about all of this. The second you put a football into the action, it speeds up. We’re not there yet.”