New health restrictions in Santa Clara County that extend beyond the current statewide mandate could deal a fatal blow to the prospect of a spring high-school sports season in the county.
The new measures, which were unveiled at a meeting of school superintendents Tuesday afternoon, prohibit any practice or competition between two “stable groups,” which would be defined as individual teams.
Indoors, “stable groups” must be kept in separate rooms and outdoors, they must keep at least 25 feet apart. Additionally, the county will require at least six feet of distance be kept among participants, even within a single group, and bar any travel beyond county lines to skirt the new rules.
The new restrictions took school and youth sports officials by surprise. It stunned some coaches to the point of tears.
“My position has gone from trying to be like the coach of a district and the optimist to being the person that always has to act like you worry, and manage expectations because every single time stuff like this happens,” said Don Austin, the superintendent of Palo Alto Unified School District. “You’ll see on there where it literally says that if you’re going to go between stable cohorts — which in our case, stable cohorts are teams — if we’re going to play Los Altos in something, we can do that as long as we maintain 25 feet of spacing. What sport is that? I have never come across that one yet.”
Dave Grissom, the commissioner of the Central Coast Section, which governs the majority of the high schools in Santa Clara County, said last week that he was in communication with county officials and that they had assured him the county would not go beyond the state Department of Public Health in limiting access to youth sports once the stay-at-home order was lifted.
It has been a rollercoaster week of emotions for coaches and athletes alike who on Monday received their first sign of hope in nearly a year, when Gov. Gavin Newsom lifted the stay-at-home order, which permitted sports in the purple reopening tier to begin competition.
That prompted a mad scramble for leagues around the Bay Area to set schedules and begin practices with the prospect of competition on the horizon. The two leagues that comprise a majority of the schools in Santa Clara County, the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League and the Blossom Valley Athletic League, had just in recent days finalized schedules to return to competition in the coming weeks.
Now, dozens of schools and hundreds of student-athletes have had their hopes dashed once again.
Saratoga boys basketball coach Patrick Judge said he was furious when he got the news and was on the verge of tears.
“I am all about — and I have been throughout the entire pandemic — I am all about following the data and trusting our leadership that we have in place,” Judge said. “This to me is just … I can’t even put it in words. We’ve worked so hard. I want to start crying right now. We’ve worked so hard to get to where we were. We kept our kids encouraged. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
