In a move that could be viewed as a positive step for return-to-play advocates, the national high school sports federation announced Tuesday that it was eliminating tiers from the coronavirus guidelines that it provided last spring.
It is unclear if the decision by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) will have an effect on the thousands of student-athletes across California who have been sidelined since March.
State high school sports officials have made it clear that they are following the guidance of the California Department of Public Health and the governor’s office as they search for ways to get kids back into the playing arena.
The Golden State Football Coaches Community advocacy group led by Serra’s Patrick Walsh and De La Salle’s Justin Alumbaugh is pushing for the CDPH to remove colored tiers from its youth sports guidelines, a major barrier that has prevented the California Interscholastic Federation and its 10 sections from giving contact sports such as football the green light to start.
“Definitely a positive,” Alumbaugh said of the modified NFHS guidelines and the possible effects they could have on the CDPH rules.
The NFHS had separated sports into “Potential Infection Risk” categories of high, moderate and low.
In the news release Tuesday, the Sports Medicine Advisory Committee noted several factors for modifying its guidelines:
— Community infection rates appear to be the strongest predictor for high school athletes being infected.
— Participants in non-contact sports show lower rates of infection than those in contact sports.
— Participants in outdoor sports show lower rates of infection than those in indoor sports.
— Face masks for indoor sports result in similar transmission rates to those in outdoor sports.
— Evidence suggests that the majority of the sports-related spread of the virus appears to come from social contact, not the sport itself.
According to the NFHS news release, its Sports Medicine Advisory Committee concluded that as “knowledge of the virus that causes COVID-19 has evolved, we have increasingly recognized that transmission depends upon multiple factors that cannot be easily accounted for by simply dividing sports into three distinct categories of risk.”
The NFHS cited recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with published and unpublished data, for the modifications to its guidelines.
“We applaud the great work of the NFHS Sports Medicine Advisory Committee throughout the past year to provide state associations and high schools with well-considered information during the pandemic,” Dr. Karissa Niehoff, NFHS executive director, said in the news release. “We appreciate the committee’s most recent attempts to reassess how student-athletes can participate in sports moving forward. While we have to be concerned about transmission of the virus first and foremost, we also must consider the mental health of students who have been unable to play sports thus far this year.”
Golden State Football Coaches Community leaders — Walsh, Alumbaugh and Torrey Pines’ Ron Gladnick — are scheduled to meet Thursday with California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly in hopes of getting the CDPH guidelines revised, too.
“It seems like everyone is trying to put their finger in the leak in the dam right now and ultimately it comes down to the state,” Alumbaugh said Friday. “April 17, May 1, if we don’t start soon, none of it matters.”
