Ironman92 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 2:36 pm
formerfcfan wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 1:45 pm
baseball16 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 1:28 pm
So what about next year? will it be the Same? Someone gets sick will teams still be quarantined? This virus is not going away, it will have variants and people will get sick and possibly die. it's not disappearing. We must learn to LIVE with the Virus and allow people to choose how they want to live! JMO
It’s only a matter of a few more months before everyone interested in getting vaccinated will have gotten one in their arms.
Stopping the spread, being vigilant and mindful of activity that puts one at directly higher risk of contracting COVID-19 is still important in the meantime. Also, schools were mindful of student safety when it came to contagion
before the COVID saga. Why would they stop, now? To play a 22nd basketball game?
Here’s what I’ve seen. I’m associated with 2 schools about 75 miles apart. One has been as careful, clean and safe and taken so many extra precautions and spent a ton of money in doing so....the other is of course taking the precautions pretty well set by the state and adhered to them. One has arguably the strictest gym rules for ballgames and the other is more lax. One school barely has any subs and other school has ample. One school has a small gym that allows opposing cheerleaders and homecoming ceremony, other is having none of that, no suckers. One sits players 6 feet apart and one shoulder to shoulder on the bench.
Both adhering to the rules put into place but differing ends of that spectrum. One school had been remote but only for 6 days as a bus driver tested positive snd quarantined the other bus drivers and weren’t able to get kids to school, other than that nothing, no one missing anything...the other hasn’t missed a single day of school...impressive but basketball team has been quarantined 2 separate times and my own kid has been quarantined 4x.
Were the schools doing virtual the smart ones? Were they they dumb ones? Who is right and what is right and wrong about all of this? It’s bonkers. The mental effects on these kids are real. Watching your team play a game via livestream because you aren’t allowed to be there with your team because a player that later tested positive got in the final minute of a game and his elbow touched your jersey and your arm grazed his arm....that’s hard for a kid that follows ALL guidelines to swallow.
These are definitely understandable frustrations.
Unfortunately, this is one side of the double-edged sword that comes with having these procedures being decided at the local level (school district, county health department): you get differences and discrepancies on the
subjective definition of "best practice", ultimately leading to different outcomes when it comes to who gets quarantined, for how long, whose allowed to do travel with whom etc. As you note, you could do a 90 minute drive from Jackson any direction and you'd be encountering districts and locales that have their own interpretations and practices.
Is there a better way of doing these things? Well, there certainly are different ways of doing these. Like, if there were more common standards on quarantining/travelling that came down from Columbus -- a "one-size fits all" approach. Not sure if that really constitutes "better", though. Would it make more sense for Jackson, Fairfield Local, Lancaster, Hillard, Canton City, Bexley and Southern Perry (Miller) to
all be following same procedures on quarantine/traveling/attendance? Going a step further -- remote learning versus hybrid versus full-time?
I suppose a second alternative would have been for to be absolutely
no protocols or guidance from the Gov and the Ohio Department of Health... leaving it up entirely to the schools if they wanted to quarantine if a known exposure or positive arose, to listen to their local health department (or not.) Even going further: leaving it up to the schools if they wanted to mandate masks and 15% capacity for attendance/or instead let everyone sit ass-to-ass in a packed gym with the choice to wear a mask (or not.) Or somewhere in between.
It's hard to thread needles. If there was a magic bullet that could make the season more 'normal' while balancing the interest of public health, I'm sure every administrator would go for it.
Last year Fairland didn’t get to end their season because we didn’t know anything about this virus.....a year later teams will have to send JV players to play in the districts and we have so much more knowledge, hell half of the US knows everything about everything, I don’t see why we just can’t ask them what to do for certain.
There is, or was, an
opinion that it was a bad idea to start a winter sports season for the '20-21 school year. Same with fall sports. Obviously it didn't gravitate beyond the individual districts, in the end, but at least OHSAA and the governor's office has done what they can to give the kids a chance to play. Even if it is riddled with imperfection and policies whose aims are not apparent at times.
I’ve yet to notice anything being lax causing anything more with this virus.
What about the general laxness of the population and their activities? See:
7-day averages in Ohio case counts from the middle of November through the middle of January -- a time period with a very close association to congregate activities, like holiday celebrations, being held inside and typically with the mixing of different households,
en masse. Compare that ~2 month window to any point in the summer for the same time-frame.
Let’s drag our heels some more on getting this vaccine out there.
It's low supply versus high demand, with increases in the supply coming soon, factored also by a very poor distribution infrastructure in the infancy of the COVID-vaccination saga.
In the grand scheme of things how do league games matter more than non league?
Something to ask the leagues.
Screw the Convo...let’s hold districts at Walmart, zero spread there. Regionals at Kroger and State games...nah, cancel them bad boys as 20x more people are infected daily than when shut down last year.
I like the Convo -- the experience, the atmosphere and symbolism. I think everyone here does, just like its understood why there aren't going to be districts held there. Postseason games being played would be a success to anyone that wanted a season, right?
State games will be played
somewhere.
22nd game? Why’d they risk 12...or even 2?
I'm not following this. Whether the "extra" game, such as an impromptu scheduling, before the tournament is the 22nd or 21st (or whatever integer) game for a given team isn't the discussion. If its a game that could otherwise be done without, then its a game that could be done without. But that's of course for the coaches and athletic department to decide. To the point bman and barlowbandit were making: there is the fact that playing another game could put you into quarantining problems right before the game. It's not an absolute. It's not an automatic. It's just a matter of risk.
