San Francisco will not enable similar sports activities as remainder of California
San Francisco continues to have stricter rules preventing the punctual return of high school football and other high and moderate contact sports in the county, as allowed under a new set of state guidelines released last week.
A spokesman for the San Francisco Department of Health confirmed that only purple-class sports are allowed in the county, but said the department is continuing to evaluate its youth sports policy. In an updated statement on Thursday, the SFDPH said the county is expected to enter the red reopening tier next Tuesday, at which point it would implement the new guidelines for outdoor sports “with some extra safeguards” four days after the rules Enable the return of football, baseball, softball, and other outdoor sports with high and moderate contact.
“This is an area where San Francisco’s health regime is currently more restrictive than the state’s,” the SFDPH said in a statement delivered to the news organization on Tuesday. “We are reviewing this new approach by the state to see what changes, if any, in our local order are warranted. At the moment, the only youth sports allowed in the purple class are allowed in San Francisco.
As soon as San Francisco enters the red reopening stage, “it intends to largely follow (the outdoor sports guidelines) with some additional safety precautions,” the SFDPH said in a second statement Thursday. “So we’ll probably only be a handful of days behind the state.”
Dave Grissom, the commissioner for the Central Coast Section of the California Interscholastic Federation, has three private West Catholic Athletic League schools in San Francisco that would be affected by stricter local rules. He previously said schools “with COVID issues” might have the option to play games until May 1, two weeks after the CIF deadline for the next season to start on time, but on Wednesday he said he did “Tried the 17th where I try to finish the season.”
“For baseball and softball, many of the red sports, I don’t know that it would get in a lot of trouble, but for football it certainly would,” said Grissom. “I think our student wellbeing has taken a back seat to the pandemic – in a way, probably rightly – but at some point our children’s wellbeing has to come first. If that is the decision of San Francisco, we have lost again. ”
St. Ignatius football coach John Regalia said he hoped the Department of Health shed some light. Regalia admitted that health officials “did a really great job stopping the spread and keeping the city as healthy as possible. That puts a lot of people on many different levels. ”
However, he also noted that officials are trying to figure out how to reopen the city’s public schools, an issue that does not affect private schools like St. Ignatius.
“The news we got from the San Francisco DPH yesterday was that California has opened up youth sports – that’s great – we’re not going to be spending our time on it now,” Regalia said. “We’re going to spend our time putting together a school opening plan.”
Regalia said he was told that district officials would be rethinking youth sports rules on March 8, “which is obviously a minor setback from what has been published not only by the state of California but by other counties in the Bay Area as well. ”
According to the latest San Francisco Health Ordinance, updated February 8, only low-contact outdoor sports are allowed in the county, and these activities are restricted to members of three households. Unless changed by Friday, it would precede state guidelines released last week to ease restrictions on higher-contact outdoor sports. While the SFDPH said it was reviewing state guidelines, a spokesman declined to give a timetable for a decision.
St. Ignatius is one of three San Francisco schools in the WCAL. The league also has four schools in Santa Clara County and one – Serra – in San Mateo County.
To prevent schools from crossing two districts, the league officials put together a South Division consisting of the four Santa Clara County Schools and a North Division with Serra and the three San Francisco Schools.
When the three schools in San Francisco aren’t allowed to play, Serra – trained by Patrick Walsh, the man who helped lead the campaign to return outdoor sports – suddenly has three open appointments in his five-week schedule.
The San Francisco edition is the latest in a roller coaster ride of emotion for the soccer community.
On Friday, the California Department of Health released revised guidelines that allowed all outdoor sports in counties with adjusted case numbers below 14 per 100,000 residents, a threshold that San Francisco currently meets. The new arrangement goes into effect on Friday, February 26th and allows new access to training and competition in sports such as soccer, baseball, softball, soccer, lacrosse, rugby and water polo.
Santa Clara County, which along with San Francisco has imposed some of the strictest coronavirus restrictions in the country, initially made no commitment to follow relaxed state guidelines. On Monday, Dr. Sara Cody, the county health officer, said she would issue new orders to bring herself in line with the state.
