High School sports: Facebook group ‘Let Them Play’ trying to get student-athletes back on field for competition
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Youth sports are still on hold in California. The hope is that local sports will be cleared to start on January 25th by the California Department of Public Health.
If given the green light, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) as well as many other youth leagues can finally start their seasons after a 10-month break.
While everyone is hoping that sports resume on January 25th, there is a new group on Facebook that is doing everything in their power to help convince leaders and health officials that sports should go on – a group named Let Them Play CA.
The group’s initiative is to show why sports need to come back to the state.
“It was done frankly out of frustration,” group creator Brad Hensley explained as to how the group was created. “My wife and I were sitting at the kitchen table two weeks ago and we’ve been patient like so many other parents, probably too patient in a system and frankly, a government that has failed our kids. No one seems to be speaking out for them or representing them. No one seems to be speaking out for them, so we knew that they were like-minded parents out there. We knew that there were coaches out there, we knew that there are players that were really suffering. So we made an attempt to creating a Facebook page with just the two of us and the next day, there were 50 that ended that day, there were 100 it became 500.”
The group was created on December 31st, 2020, and has quickly grown to have an astounding 59,600 members.
“No, we did not expect that,” Hensley added. “We were hoping that if we got 1,000 people we could start to get a little attention and start to grow. But it was ever after about a week when we aligned with the Golden State Coaches Association and just people. We started getting three to 4,000 members a day. We weren’t doing any advertising, it was just word of mouth. It became pretty clear that a Facebook page was about to become a movement.”
The group has received support from some high-profile people as well. Among them are Green Bay Packers quarterback and two-time Super Bowl Champion Aaron Rodgers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback, and six-time Super Bowl Champion Tom Brady, Green Bay Packers left tackle David Bakhtiari, San Francisco Giants fourth-ranked prospect Hunter Bishop. Next Sunday, Rodgers, and Bakhtiari will face Brady in the NFC Championship Game.
While California and many other states haven’t even started their high school sports seasons, many states have already made it through their fall seasons. To add fuel to the debate, Kentucky and Wisconsin have released data on how COVID-19 has been transmitted through athletic competition. It also doesn’t help that Oregon and Washington are beginning their seasons here in a few weeks.
Data has also shown that sports conditioning hasn’t contributed to the rise in COVID-19 cases across the state. Since schools started doing conditioning, the number of cases from it in California has been minuscule. In all 19,630 athletes took part in conditioning statewide with a grand total of 522 cases coming from that. Of those 522, 9 cases came from conditioning. With coaches, it’s much of the same. There were only 187 cases among the 2,897 coaches that were tested across the state.
However, the more concerning matter is the mental health of kids given the fact that they had sports yanked from them in mid-March and haven’t had anything since.
On top of all that, we’ve been watching professional and high-level college sports go on even with cases popping up in all those leagues.
The group’s creation comes nearly two months after many student-athletes and coaches rallied at the State Capital after Thanksgiving, which ended up having no bearing on sports. According to Hensley, that rally was completely separate from the group.
“In November, we were still patiently waiting, for guidance in terms of when the kids could go back and play sports,” Hensley said of the rally at the State Capitol. “I mean, maybe it added a little fuel to our fire eventually. But that wasn’t the reason that we started the movement. It was really the unveiling of what we believe is a flawed tiered system for sports. That was kind of the last straw that we realized that under this system, we’re not going to be able to play sports. Our kids are being damaged emotionally and physically. We need to do something.”
On Friday, there was a total of 140 Let Them Play rallies statewide. There will be another set of rallies at the end of the month.
“So terms of the rallies, there’s 140,” Hensley said of the rallies. “Now, across the state, if you’d asked me two days ago, that number was 96. So that number is obviously growing.”
Since Friday, the Let Them Play CA group has also added subgroups by section. That means that parents, coaches, and administrators can communicate with others based on their section. There are 10 CIF sections statewide.
Looking at CIF’s new plan
The third time was finally the charm for the CIF as far as getting clearance from the state in order to proceed with sports.
Yet, there is still a snag in the process. Sports have been assigned to the color tiers, which will without a doubt make it impossible for certain sports to be played.
One of the sports that has a bleak-looking future in with the tier system is football. In order for football to be played, the county must be in the orange tier. With the season having to be concluded by April 17th and many counties all over the state currently being in the purple tier, football season just doesn’t seem feasible. In order to have a season, there will be no section or state championships.
“Not very likely. I mean, everyone’s in the purple tier right now,” Serra-San Mateo head football coach Patrick Walsh explained. “There (are) some counties like LA County who’ve never been out of purple ever.”
On Tuesday, the CIF released a statement that if schools don’t follow state and local guidelines by playing games before they’re allowed that they could be subjected to fines, suspension, and be removed from their memberships.
Many leagues have also been making contingency plans for the scenario that they need to play all their games within their county.
“I’ve just I’ve discussed that just internally with the coaches here in the county,” Walsh added. “ That brings up other issues in terms of disparity size of schools, public versus private, and it brings up another set of issues.”
The current plan for the CIF still includes section and state championships for season two, which is scheduled to begin in March.
In an effort to have a football season, Walsh joined forces with other football coaches around the state to form the Golden State Coaches Association. To date, the GSCA has nearly 700 members.
