Author Topic: Spring sports and Covid  (Read 2078 times)

nessness

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Spring sports and Covid
« on: March 28, 2021, 01:03:03 PM »
If your kid is playing an outdoor sport this spring, what Covid precautions are they taking?

I'm asking because my 6-year-old is playing Little League t-ball, and, despite having a designated "Covid coordinator", her team is taking exactly zero precautions - neither kids nor parents (other than my husband and me) wear masks or make any effort to social distance, everyone high-fives each other, they don't do temperature or symptom checks, and don't sanitize hands, even before the kids eat their snack after practice.

I don't want to pull my daughter - I've been homeschooling her all year, and plan to continue homeschooling the rest of the year, so the socialization benefits to her are huge. My husband is fully vaccinated, and the rest of us are unvaccinated but low risk.

But do you think it would be reasonable to reach out to the coach/"Covid coordinator" and ask them to take some precautions, like parents wearing masks when on the field with the kids, and limiting physical contact with the kids (e.g. high-fives)? Or is this just the way things are with kids sports?


mrs sideways

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #1 on: March 28, 2021, 07:03:53 PM »
Yes, that sounds like a totally reasonable request.

What's the Covid situation where you are? I'm considering sports for one of my kids again, only because our area is doing abnormally well and cases are plummeting. If your town/county is also doing well it might be less of an issue.

nessness

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #2 on: March 28, 2021, 07:25:29 PM »
Yes, that sounds like a totally reasonable request.

What's the Covid situation where you are? I'm considering sports for one of my kids again, only because our area is doing abnormally well and cases are plummeting. If your town/county is also doing well it might be less of an issue.
We're doing way better than we were a couple months ago, but we're still in the red tier, which is the second-highest. I think our case rate is around 8/100k.

jeninco

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #3 on: March 28, 2021, 09:18:24 PM »
Our area is doing OK-ish (high schoolers will be returning to 4 days/week  in-operson on Tuesday), and high school sports have started up in a limited way, for shortened seasons, with COVID changes.

Players have to wear masks in some counties, not in others. Even in our county, one of the strictest, I believe they can pull the mask down if they're >10 feet from another player.
Each player is allowed 2-3 guests, who are required to sit in the stands 6 feet apart from people not in their households and wear masks.

Sports teams occasionally have someone exposed, and everyone who had contact with that kid is required to quarantine for (some changing amount of time -- perhaps it's now 10 days?). Kids fill out online health checks every day, not sure about temperature checks.

My kid's also sometimes coaching smaller kids (around the age of yours, or younger) and they're also wearing masks, washing their hands a lot, etc. etc. Your "COVID coordinator" is failing.

nessness

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #4 on: March 29, 2021, 06:57:29 PM »
Update: my husband talked to the coach, and asked for parents to wear masks when on the field or in the dugout, and for kids to wear masks in the dugout. The coach was noncommittal and said he'd talk to the league about it. Ugh - I'm not really reassured by this response.

ETA: A second update, in case anyone's interested. The coach sent out an email that we will be starting to follow "game-day Covid protocols", which include the requests we made, plus other protocols, like temperature checks and only one adult spectator per kid. I don't know if he was chastised by the league or what, but I'm happy about this, and happy that it seems this will be the standard for games too.
« Last Edit: March 30, 2021, 04:10:39 PM by nessness »

Hotstreak

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #5 on: April 01, 2021, 10:11:58 PM »
Your family is either low risk or vaccinated.  At this point in the vaccination process, most super high risk people have already been vaccinated (or have turned down the vaccine).  Children are not at any real risk from this virus, and the other parents seem fine with the risk level that was taking place.  I think your request was excessive. 

mrs sideways

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2021, 10:18:38 AM »
Your family is either low risk or vaccinated.  At this point in the vaccination process, most super high risk people have already been vaccinated (or have turned down the vaccine).  Children are not at any real risk from this virus, and the other parents seem fine with the risk level that was taking place.  I think your request was excessive.

Vaccination rates depend on where OP is. My area may be doing well on cases, but we still don't have enough vaccines to go around. I know a LOT of high-risk or older people who are either trying to get appointments or driving hours away just to score a shot. Keeping up precautions for another month is painless and still beneficial.

nessness

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2021, 09:38:26 PM »
Your family is either low risk or vaccinated.  At this point in the vaccination process, most super high risk people have already been vaccinated (or have turned down the vaccine).  Children are not at any real risk from this virus, and the other parents seem fine with the risk level that was taking place.  I think your request was excessive.

Vaccination rates depend on where OP is. My area may be doing well on cases, but we still don't have enough vaccines to go around. I know a LOT of high-risk or older people who are either trying to get appointments or driving hours away just to score a shot. Keeping up precautions for another month is painless and still beneficial.
Yeah, I don't think it's accurate in my area to say all high-risk people have been vaccinated or declined - people under 65 with high-risk medical conditions only recently became eligible, and haven't all been able to get appointments yet.

But it's a moot point now anyway since (a) I already made the request, the coach agreed to it, and the other parents followed the restrictions without complaint, and (b) we're into the game season now, where the restrictions are set by the league and not the coaches.

Cranky

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #8 on: April 06, 2021, 11:54:52 AM »
I didn't see anybody wearing masks at kids' sports LAST summer, so I'm pretty sure it won't be a thing here this summer.

LiveLean

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #9 on: April 13, 2021, 03:48:07 PM »
Boy, it seems like a parallel universe here in Florida. We've had sports since May 2020. Masks usually required, not always enforced. State high school swim meet in November masks were required and people packed in the bleachers together like any other year.

Florida gets mocked for lots of things and Covid has been no exception. Bottom line: we opened in May 2020 and our covid numbers are middle-of-the-pack nationally despite a huge senior population. Our kids have had in-person class since August. I can't imagine living anywhere else for the last 13 months.

waltworks

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #10 on: April 18, 2021, 09:14:41 PM »
We had kids sports last summer, fall, and winter (ski racing, so outdoors). I (coach) had to wear a mask, but the kids basically did what kids do. No problems. It's pretty hard to transmit Covid outdoors, and kids are about as low risk as you can get.

It sounds like they are going to do what you asked regardless, but I will warn you that you should expect the kids to ignore most of these rules. If you're not comfortable with that, don't let your daughter play.

-W

9patch

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #11 on: April 19, 2021, 12:46:58 PM »
My son has been swimming, and their league has been pretty strict. Last summer with outdoor swimming, it was wearing masks while walking to and from the water. They recently re-opened the pools, and it's masks all the way to the pool, limited people per lane. They had a swim meet, and it was no spectators, only 20 officials, and everyone with masks until they get to their swim lane for their competition.

regenaeb

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #12 on: May 04, 2021, 07:22:29 AM »
So this Spring we are back to soccer (the fall it was cancelled due to close contact sport, it was considered medium risk, but still within 3 ft contact). This Spring all players are required to wear masks at all times except when drinking water and then they have circles on the ground they are to stand in to take their masks down to drink. All coaches, refs and parents are required to wear masks at all time when near the field. Even though our governor relaxed the outdoor mask mandate this past Friday, the state soccer association, that we all must follow has not allowed no masks for the parents. I have a feeling they will keep it up through the end of the season which is only about another 6 weeks. In the Fall we will probably be without masks. My daughter and her teammates have had zero issues with wearing masks to play. They just don't seem to be bothered by them, they are used to wearing them in school all day long, so on the playing field is no different to them. My daughter is an attacking midfielder, so she runs the most on her team during a game or scrimmage and has not had an issue at all. Last Fall when soccer was cancelled she was able to join a cross country running team and she ran 5k's 4 days a week while wearing a mask in the heat. Again, not a problem. The runners had to wear masks at all times and also the parents and coaches of the cross country team. I think parents make more of a problem out of it then kids. She is 12 years old and says it doesn't make a difference.

I have family in Florida that have been playing like others have said about FL and TX since last May and they have had problems. They have been quarantined at least 2 times each season since last May (they play year round club soccer). A girl on my nieces team contracted it at school and gave it to a teammate, who took it home and gave it to her great uncle (who lives with them) and he was hospitalized on a vent for a month. The club was shut down for a month after that. They were lucky he didn't die or get sued. After that they came back and were required to wear masks and they did for about 2 months then they all got lazy and went back to no masks most of the time. A second incident happened after a tournament in GA and they were shut down again for 2 weeks. And back to masks in the late Fall. But again after a month they stopped enforcing it. Last I heard they all had to be tested again/quaratined because the coach tested positive. My sister in law keeps getting annoyed when they have to pause play over this, but not the fact that they are not keeping up with the mask wearing.

I too have fatigue at this point over the mask wearing, but can handle keeping up with it a couple of more months until we can get the 12-15 year olds vaccinated. Fall will be back to normal in our soccer world and I can wait for that. Can't imagine being the family that gave someone else Covid and they were hospitalized over it because my daughter was told she didn't need to keep her mask on.

MaybeBabyMustache

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Re: Spring sports and Covid
« Reply #13 on: May 04, 2021, 08:05:39 AM »
Our area is doing OK-ish (high schoolers will be returning to 4 days/week  in-operson on Tuesday), and high school sports have started up in a limited way, for shortened seasons, with COVID changes.

Players have to wear masks in some counties, not in others. Even in our county, one of the strictest, I believe they can pull the mask down if they're >10 feet from another player.
Each player is allowed 2-3 guests, who are required to sit in the stands 6 feet apart from people not in their households and wear masks.

Sports teams occasionally have someone exposed, and everyone who had contact with that kid is required to quarantine for (some changing amount of time -- perhaps it's now 10 days?). Kids fill out online health checks every day, not sure about temperature checks.

My kid's also sometimes coaching smaller kids (around the age of yours, or younger) and they're also wearing masks, washing their hands a lot, etc. etc. Your "COVID coordinator" is failing.

I'm in California, but basically this. Also, my son's high school soccer team did twice weekly COVID tests. Which was very useful, as another team in the league had a huge COVID outbreak & infected two other schools. The season ended as a result. My kids aren't vaccinated yet (14 & 15), but fingers crossed for next week. Kids are back in school, full day with masks, but until they are vaccinated, there's plenty of risk.