Sports springing into action

As COVID conditions seem to fluctuate less and less, counties are already eager to get started on plans for reopening even further, especially with vaccine shots being distributed more frequently every day in our state.

For athletes and sports fans, there’s really only one question: when will the games begin? As far as CVHS staff is concerned, it is no longer when, but rather which sports will come back into our academic lives. 

Currently, cross country, track, and swimming have been resuming in-person practice and are already preparing for competitive events upcoming in the near future. Though there has been discussion and trials on how to go about broadcasting the event for family and friends to watch, it seems that there is no definitive answer thus far.

On March 4, a legal settlement was reached with the state of California that will approve the resuming of indoor sports for youth. This will reduce the state’s restrictions on things such as basketball, volleyball and wrestling.

For CVHS, sports such as baseball and softball have been officially cleared and are beginning the transition from conditioning hubs to tryouts and practices. 

Football has also received clearance, along with additional guidelines. The state of California has offered a compromise to football teams — football practice can resume only if athletes get tested every week for COVID-19.

“I’m still a little worried about COVID,” said Chloe Platz, an athlete from the CVHS cross country team. “But it’s nice to be out of the house and doing stuff again.”

As of now, other sports are still being on hold until the Alameda county reaches safer tiers of COVID-19.

At the red tier, we can expect to see baseball and softball. At the orange tier, we can also expect to have badminton, football, soccer, and water polo back in session as well. Finally, for the final tier of yellow, sports such as basketball, competitive cheerleading, volleyball, and wrestling will be allowed once more.

“I would say they are handling it well,” says a previous member of the track and field team in regards to how the CVHS athletic department has approached reopening sports. “Sports aren’t my priority right now during a pandemic, that’s why I discontinued track.”

CVUSD will continue to update us and follow any condition put up by the Alameda County Public Health Department that would allow our school to introduce sports back into our lives. Because of this, we will most definitely see even more precautions taken to ensure the athletes’ and coaches’ safety. 

This could range to having families with athletes providing informed consent for participation, Covid-19 testing on our coaches, and Covid-19 testing on student athletes for specific sports.