You can’t. Either you do the best you can with masks and distancing when and where possible, or you don’t play. Here in Texas, fall sports are winding down and my son is getting ready to start high school soccer. We have had a minimal number of cases at our high school, and I’m not aware of any spread that has occurred through sports.
No. But I also don’t know if it’s great for him to be traveling outside of the restrictions that will be imposed this spring. They’ll have to get on a bus, maybe stay the night in a hotel, eat meals during that time. Bowdoin is investing a lot of planning and money into their plan and is it worth the risk to start competition again? Also, not sure if starting some sports and not others is really fair. S19 is training with his XC friends who he lives with and they are in great shape right now and enjoying running together. Once they go back to school, they can run with the whole team and, for S, I think that’s enough given the circumstances.
And, just FYI, I wouldn’t consider Bowdoin a completely closed campus. Visitors are not allowed but kids can go to town for essentials. And the outing club has been taking small groups on trips (some overnight) for the last month or so. The students aren’t completely locked down.
My son completed his middle school XC season earlier this month. Five meets (all away and some nearly two hours away) and no one got COVID or even had to quarantine throughout the season.
Hotel overnights would be tough… Sharing a bed or even just a room with someone not in your pod sounds risky.
My daughter played for her HS tennis team this fall. Short season, cut shorter by a member for the team getting COVID and forcing the school to cancel the last match of the season.
How aggressive is the testing policy in your area? Was there routine, complied asymptomatic screening? Is it possible that kids did catch COVID but with cases so mild that they didn’t think to get tested or require any medical attention so the cases were not officially counted?
There is a big difference between “ There hasn’t been any cases” and “ No cases has been diagnosed”.
Of course there are probably uncounted cases. We live in a small county (10,000 residents). There is no mandated testing in the community or at any of our schools, although there has been well-attended free community testing offered 1-2 times per month. We have three active cases at the high school right now, and 11 across the county. This has been a pretty standard count since school started in August. If the school were spreading the virus through asymptomatic carriers, you would think the community numbers would be higher. These are numbers I can personally live with.
This is a rural and somewhat isolated community, so I realize our situation is unique. But I think it’s been really good for my kids and I know most families are happily sending their kids to school every day. We’ve actually had several new families moving here so their kids can attend school in-person.
@homerdog some colleges in (same conference) are requiring all athletes who test positive for covid be cleared by a cardiologist before working out at all. This to guard agains myocardial issues. I think this is wise.
Don’t know if you all saw that Cuomo just changed his Covid quarantine for out of staters. No more 14 day quarantine. Now you need a negative test before leaving for NY, you quarantine for 3 days, then take another test. If 2nd test is negative, you are able to go about your business, otherwise you must continue to quarantine.
This will be a game-changer for a lot of folks. Including sports, kids returning to NY from out-of-state colleges, kids from out-of-state returning to their NY colleges.
Not all competitive sports require close proximity to others. For example: golf, rowing (single seat boats), tennis, some track and field sports (running events may require staying in lanes and leaving some lanes empty to ensure distancing).
However, since some of these sports may be seen as more “preppy”, while more “plebian” sports like basketball would not be able to be played, that could lead to an undesired look.
Some quick updates from my neck of the woods and beyond.
RIT is experiencing a huge surge of positive cases. As of Oct 30, they have 17 students and 2 employees have tested positive from the past 14 days, 45 on quarantined (on and off campus) and 15 on isolation (on and off campus). The school is on the verge of going to orange level. They are three weeks away from Thanksgiving break. Monroe County has 656 confirmed cases as of today. The email that we received were notifications about the virus being detected in portions of the two housing Global village and University commons. Two weeks ago, its the greek housing and Riverknoll apartments where my son is. Thankfully his covid testing came back negative.
Colgate University on the other hand is currently at Gate 3 with only 1 active case (employee) and 0 case for students. The recent random testing of 300 people came back negative base on President Casey’s video update. This weekend has a lot of students celebrating halloween. I am hoping that the students were acting more responsibly. We will see next week.
Lastly, here’s an interesting thing that happened in our school district. The school and police are currently investigating an incident in the middle school where one of the zoom classes were hacked. The hacker posted as a student and then played pornographic video and was seen by those group doing remote classes. Currently the district is doing a hybrid 3:2 in person/remote classes with the student population is divided into 2 groups and take turns in attending classes in person and remote. We were horrified to hear it from our local news and then an email came from the school superintendent.
I don’t know about everyone, all these happening around us, the pandemic, the instability in our govt, the incoming election, the bad economy and stress from work (we are at below staffing in the lab and processing more than 600 covid swabs last Friday in a lab not normally equipped with this amount of viral workload), is taking a toll on everyone. That is why I am getting mad every day seeing people ignoring the pandemic when so much is at stake here. Be safe everyone and blessings all around.
Depends on how hardcore they are. I’m pretty sure DIII is extending eligibility waivers, or will be soon. Wouldn’t be the first time an athlete has stayed an extra year in order to play a sport.
@circuitrider yes NCAA just extended a blanket waiver for DIII. My kids have received now 3 seasons of waivers between the two of them. And probably about to receive one more with winter conference cancellation. Waivers are great but unknown what their future holds whether grad school or law school or work directly after their undergrad experiences. It is really sad for these athletes but health and academics come first and foremost.
True. S19 doesn’t know any athletes who are going to stick around an extra year just to compete and he knows quite a few fall athletes in a range of different sports. Maybe it would be more of a D1 thing?
Athletes have always had 5 years to play 4 years of their sport, now they have 6 years to do that (at least the spring/fall sports for d3, winter TBD).
At many D3 schools it’s complicated if the school doesn’t offer grad degrees/programming. If the student doesn’t take a leave, many students will graduate in 4 years, so if there’s no grad programs the student athlete would have to transfer to a school that offers grad courses.
If the student does slow down progress to their bachelor’s degree, there is the not-insignificant cost associated with another year or two of undergrad…not only tuition, room and board, but the opportunity cost of delaying work and it’s related income, promotions, etc.
Here’s an ideal situation that a family member got…graduated a D1 school with 1 year eligibility left and was recruited with full scholarship to another D1 school where he will be getting a masters degree.
Best possible scenario! Wow!! BTW I simply cannot imagine paying for an additional year of college for my kid to compete… Unless they were possibly going pro.
Not sure if these links have been posted before but I just came across them in a higher ed blog I follow. The first is from Davidson College and is a dashboard of the Covid plans for both Spring & Fall 2020 for a wide range of institutions.
https://collegecrisis.shinyapps.io/dashboard/
This second link is from the National Student Clearinghouse and reports enrolment numbers for Fall 2020. As a summation they report:
I think we’re all forgetting the elephant in the room here which is that is no NESCAC athlete is required to play in order to hold on to their financial aid award. You can be recruited heavily, admitted ED on the basis of a “slot”, given a full scholarship (if, that’s what it would take to make the college affordable) and decide he or she is no longer interested in playing that sport. So, it’s not only a matter of priorities, it’s a matter of trade-offs. Your student-athlete can still be a student even after his sport is discontinued.
by definition, there are no athletic scholarships at the DIII level, i.e., NESCAC. All aid is merit and/or need-based. Now, of course, D3 college could extend their merit/need-based aid for a 5th year, but they’d likely have to do it for everyone.
There are some excellent D3 colleges that have equally excellent and well respected graduate degrees…