High School Football: Beloved Fall Tradition Or Unnecessary Coronavirus Risk?

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The Briarwood Christian Lions and Spain Park Jaguars faced off in Hoover, Ala. on August 28. It was their second game of the season being played during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Russell County High School football coach Mark Rose speaks to players during a spring game in 2019. He’s against having his team play this season without state-mandated coronavirus testing. Alabama high school officials, like in many other states, say there’s not enough money for tests.

Courtesy of Charesa Danielson

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Rose says that’s reckless and dangerous.

«We’re breaking every rule that every doctor in the world says. We’re not going face-to-face [in] school, yet we’re running players into each other all week, and sending them home untested. And then on Friday night, they want us to go out there and run ’em in, 100 on our sideline and 100 on the other sideline, and all we know is nobody out there has been tested.

Rose says an asymptomatic outbreak on his team landed a 33-year-old assistant coach in intensive care for nearly two weeks, and sickened a player’s mother. The risk of spread is greater, he says, in his rural county where many of his players live in multi-generational homes.

«We’re sending them back into homes with families that’re vulnerable, and this is a mass social injustice, Rose said. «I can’t stand by and watch it. It’s disproportionately affecting minorities, and not only that, but poor rural folks in Alabama because they got multi-generations in the house.

«Some of the them folks at the [Alabama High School Athletic Association – AHSAA] need to come look some of these people in the eye and see the fear they have and see me telling them to keep their son home and work out, because I fear for their health. It’s more important than football.

No funding

«I guess what Coach Rose would like to do is have the state or some entity pay for the testing for all the students and the coaches, said Ron Ingram, the Assistant Director at the AHSAA. «That would be admirable if the funding was there.

It’s not – in Alabama or most other states. Ingram says Alabama acknowledges the risk of football and coronavirus, but believes it can be mitigated with safety protocols the state does have.

«We’re not going to sit here and lament that we don’t have something, Ingram said. «We’re going to work with what we have. And what we have are dedicated, professional teachers, adminstrators, coaches that really want the best for their children, that God graced them with to look after.

Ingram adds it still needs to be established whether or not football is the potential spreader Mark Rose fears.

«Right now, we don’t have enough data to say playing football ups that risk, he said. «That same teenager [who plays football], if he goes to the local McDonald’s on a Friday night with his friends, that same risk, he still goes back home to the same parents and to the same grandparents.

An experiment

If it’s data they need, it’s coming, says Dr. Michael Shingles. He’s on a sports medicine committee advising high schools in Michigan, which this week reinstated high school football after earlier cancelling it for the fall.

«We’re going to have an experiment in the United States right now because there are states that are going to [play high school football] and states that are not, Dr. Shingles said. «And we’re going to find out [the impact], probably in the next couple of months, not from positive tests but from people getting sick and having major issues.

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Players from both Spain Park and Briarwood swarm the ball carrier during a play late in the first half. Social distancing on the sidelines is emphasized but impossible on the field.

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Players from both Spain Park and Briarwood swarm the ball carrier during a play late in the first half. Social distancing on the sidelines is emphasized but impossible on the field.

Russell Lewis/NPR

Mark Rose in Alabama would rather not have high school football players and their families be «guinea pigs.

Rose says he doesn’t speak for officials in his school district, but he does for many other coaches who fear losing their jobs if they speak out. And who fear worse.

«I got coaching friends coming apart at the seams, Rose said, «worrying about somebody dying every day.

Rose was braced for a showdown when he made it clear he would not coach his team tonight, in Russell County’s season-opening game, as a way to protest playing without testing.

But then the virus intervened.

This week, one of his players tested positive, possibly exposing as many as two dozen teammates.

Practices are shut down. Tonight’s game is off. And Rose says it’s uncertain when his Russell County Warriors will play football again.