LAKEPORT — Up and down the state, north, south, east and west, the call on Friday afternoon was to Let Them Play in rallies held in big cities and small towns, including at Museum Park on North Main Street in downtown Lakeport.
A grassroots effort by parents of frustrated that their middle and high school athletes have been denied access to the sports they so love culminated in a call for action during the Let Them Play event, which comes nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic that, among other things, has locked down fields and courts across California since mid-March of 2020.
The coronavirus wiped out nearly the entire 2020 spring sports high school schedule after canceling regional and state playoffs to end the 2019-20 basketball season. With the pandemic extending into the 2020-21 high school season, all fall (football, volleyball, soccer and cross country) and winter (basketball and wrestling) sports have been postponed as the virus has sickened nearly 3 million of the state’s residents and killed more than 33,000.
While a limited return to high school sports is in the works beginning Feb. 1, the list of sports currently approved by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) includes only a handful that have the least interaction among athletes – cross country, golf, tennis and track – because of the color-coded system used by the state to track the degree of danger the virus poses to residents in each of California’s 58 counties. Nearly all of the counties are currently in the most restrictive stage, which is purple. The next step up is red followed by orange and yellow, the least restrictive stage.
The CDPH working with the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports in the state, has designated the color each county needs to reach before offering certain sports. Baseball and softball can start when a county hits red, for instance. Football, soccer and volleyball require another step up to the orange tier, while basketball and wrestling can’t start until a county reaches yellow.
“And what are the odds of that?” asked incoming Clear Lake High School varsity boys basketball coach Mike Damiata, who attended Friday’s rally, about reaching the yellow stage in Lake County before his already-delayed season is supposed to open in mid-March.
“Not very good,” Damiata said of the odds a 2020-21 basketball season ever taking place.
The 2020 football season, delayed since last August, has to be completed by April 17 under CIF guidelines if the 2021 fall season is to start on time (this coming August). That means Lake County would have to hit the orange tier on the COVID-19 ranking system by Feb. 1 to have a season of eight to 10 weeks long at best.
Let Them Play organizers, citing scientific evidence that teenagers are less likely to come down with the virus and most likely to make a quick recovery if they do, are asking the state to open up all of the sports right now, claiming the risk is low to athletes based on what health experts know about COVID-19 so far.
That was clearly the sentiment at the Lakeport rally on Friday where all of Lake County’s middle schools and high schools were represented by athletes and parents alike, with many of the parents saying that the physical and mental well-being of their kids is at stake, and the longer they are denied access to sports the worse the situation becomes.
Loud chants of “Let them play! Let them play!” echoed through the air at times during the rally, which included guest speakers, most of them high school athletes who are unable to do the things they love best right now.
One of them, Rubi Ford, a three-sport athlete at Clear Lake High School, pretty much summed up the feeling of her fellow athletes when she said, “…We haven’t had the opportunity to play sports and I know it’s really affecting us all, like really bad, so I just want to say thank you to everybody who came out and hopefully we can play soon.”
Another athlete, soccer and basketball standout Maddy Young of Upper Lake High School, said “Sports was a way for me to interact with friends, keeps me going to school, keeps me active and moving. I think them taking away our sports is hurting us all inside … thank you everybody for coming out.”
Parents and athletes also voiced concerns that what should be “great high school memories” will never be experienced, making them “dreams and memories lost forever.”
A great many of the cars and trucks passing the line of Let Them Play-themed signs held by rally-goers on North Main Street honked their horns in support.