Sharing the field

Pavel Turovski

Joshua Baxter

One year after the COVID-19 outbreak changed the sports world forever, California high school athletics are finally beginning their seasons. However, each of the three sports seasons had to condense into two shortened, overlapping seasons.

As a result, many sports are playing simultaneously, meaning that sharing fields and other athletic venue times for practices could be problematic.

For instance, teams that typically play in the fall are just now getting their seasons underway. These sports will have to share field space with both winter and spring, such as soccer and lacrosse.

“This impacts everybody, but we’re just happy to be able to play. So far, we’ve been able to practice like we normally have in previous years,” Eric Rado, head coach of varsity football, said. “We just get creative with our coaching staff, so the kids get the maximum benefit out of the situation.”

As a result of sharing athletic facilities, many sports must shorten the time they are allowed to practice. According to Patrick Smith, the athletic director at Carlmont, teams might have to shorten practices to an hour or an hour and a half, rather than the usual two hours.

“We’ll try to work it out so teams get some time every day, but it’s going to be less than they’re usually used to,” Smith said.

Teams may also have to plan some off-days of practice or find an unconventional practice location somewhere on campus. For example, both the baseball and softball fields have grass areas that another team may use for their practice, provided that the two respective teams are not practicing.

“We’ll look at every area we can to get people out there,” Smith said.

While every team will get a chance to practice and play a season, the priority is on spring sports, which didn’t get an entire season due to the outbreak of COVID-19 last year. Because of this, fall and winter sports will have significantly shortened seasons, while spring sports will get closer to an entire season.

However, this also means that some teams may have to work their practices around other sports games since everything is overlapping.

“If we’re hosting a soccer game, whose game times are 4:30 and 6 p.m., they end around 7:30 p.m. Usually, they start their warmups around 3:45, so a chunk of the field could be used from 3:45 to 7:30, which cuts into the amount of time that you can get out there,” Smith said.

To make matters stranger, water polo, typically a fall sport, will start a few weeks after swimming. As the swim season has already begun, water polo, who began their season on March 15, had to work around the swimmers and only use the pool for practice before school and at night.

Even so, working around swimmers’ schedules is nothing new for water polo. Even during their regular season, the water polo team shares the pool with the Otter Swim Club, coached

by varsity swim coach Fred Farley.

“[Farley] also coaches the Otters, and he rents out the pool during that time, but we’re in a coaches’ group text, so we’ve been pretty good at being able to figure things out. If water polo is in season, swim will move to the morning and later time, or swim is in season, meaning that water polo will take the morning and later times,” Justine Hedlund, head coach of varsity boys water polo, said.

Still, these sports’ overlap has forced people to adjust to strange times and work with the change.

“The players are so motivated because none of us expected the pandemic to last this long. We started morning practices in July and thought it would just be a few months, but it’s been seven months of practice three days a week at 6:30 a.m.,” Hedlund said.

Aside from sharing practice locations, teams may also lose some players to other sports. While students were initially allowed to play two different sports concurrently, new mandates prevent this. Students may have to choose between sports such as water polo and lacrosse. In previous years, students would’ve been able to play both of these sports as they take part in two different seasons.

Another change from earlier this year is that the pod system will no longer be necessary. Rather than splitting a team into multiple pods with specific amounts of people, every individual team will act as a pod, with coaches keeping junior varsity (JV) and varsity separate.

However, with limited space and time, coaches may have to adjust to splitting the field between JV and varsity. This means they may have to compensate one another for different periods on different days so that every team gets a chance to practice.

Sharing the field among JV and varsity teams is nothing new, but this year they will have shorter times on practice spaces.

Hopefully, keeping teams separate will reduce the risk of catching COVID-19 as well as reduce the spread. If JV and varsity split up and one level has contact with COVID-19, the hope is that the other team will still be able to get out and practice.

“We’ll try not to mix JV and varsity because if one kid gets it, and those teams have been mixing regularly, we have to shut down both teams. If one team is on one half of the field and the other team is on the other half of the field, if a varsity player gets it, the JV team can still go on,” Smith said.

Pavel Turovski

“This impacts everybody, but we’re just happy to play.”

- Eric Rado, varsity football coach

CCS pivots around COVID-19

Preston Kwok

As reopening continues, COVID-19 presents challenges for those involved in organizing sporting events.

The Central Coast Section (CCS) is a part of the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF). CCS is responsible for governing and organizing high school athletic playoffs from San Francisco to King City. However, all of these responsibilities came to a halt when COVID-19 spread across the Bay Area in March.

COVID-19 was a major unknown to those working at CCS. The current CCS commissioner, David Grissom, was appointed to the position during the beginning of COVID-19’s spread in the Bay Area. The position as a commissioner came with more responsibilities than anticipated.

“Schools were shut down originally, which really meant that sports couldn’t happen. We also knew very little about COVID at the time,” Grissom said.

Whenever high schools become eligible to compete in the CCS playoff, lots of planning goes into preparing for a particular sport’s playoffs. There are many moving parts that the CCS needs to be aware of for a playoff to run smoothly and succeed.

“Quite a bit of work goes into the playoffs for each sport. From creating the criteria for individuals or teams to qualify for the playoffs, to the creation of each of the divisions, to securing the sites, to hiring of staff [and] officials,” Grissom said.

However, with COVID-19 halting all plans for playoffs in the past year, many employees were laid off. Despite the profound change in the number of employees and the work given on any particular day, the limited staff still keep themselves busy by constantly monitoring the spread of COVID-19 throughout multiple counties.

“From ongoing conversations with six county health departments, to the creation of sports schedules, to on-going management with our leagues and assisting them with their needs, to eligibility. The second thing we have been centered on is CCS playoffs. This is an area where we continue to monitor if it will be needed but we still have to plan for it either way,” Grissom said.

With the recent news that the spread of COVID-19 has been slowing down, CIF has begun permitting sporting events to be held. On cifstate.org, under their COVID-19 guidelines, they state that counties in the purple tier can allow sports such as running, golf, and tennis. The red tier allows sports such as baseball and softball. The orange tier consists of sports like football, water polo and soccer. Lastly, the yellow tier includes sports such as basketball, volleyball, and wrestling.

While some sports may be opening up, CCS has mandated certain regulations for specific sports. For example, some may require a weekly COVID-19 test.

“[A] COVID test is required as long as the numbers with COVID lie between seven [to] 14 per 100,000. All sports also have to have their parents sign a waiver so that there is an acknowledgment that there are inherent risks with playing sports. Finally, the amount of spectators at any event will be quite small,” Grissom said.

With sports opening up and CCS preparing for possible playoffs this season, students are feeling a sense of relief that certain sports are becoming available.

Dylan Murphy, a junior on the track team, feared that with the track season being canceled last year, he would not be able to show colleges his skills. However, with the track season opening, he is excited to see what is in store for him.

“I’m happy that this is happening and I’m ready to take any precautions needed to be able to participate this season,” Murphy said.

Pavel Turovski