The decision to allow indoor sports to proceed this winter in Kansas high schools strikes us a bit of a risk, but a risk probably worth taking.
The board that oversees high school sports this past week voted to proceed with the usual schedule, more or less. That means basketball, swimming, wrestling and other activities will go ahead with practice and competition this winter, following safety protocols already in place.
The flip side is that there will be no fans in the stands — not even parents — to watch these kids compete. That will surely be rough on the parents who’ve watched their kids play for years, and who are heavily invested — emotionally, financially and otherwise — in their participation.
But the reality is that adults are the ones more at risk of serious cases of the virus, particularly when you start thinking about grandparents coming to games, too. Eliminating the crowds in high school gyms seems like a no-brainer to us.
Allowing the competitions to proceed at all? That’s a tougher call.
Clearly, some kids running up and down a basketball court are likely to unwittingly infect each other. Basketball is a contact sport, don’t let anybody fool you. And some kid who’s asymptomatic is going breathe enough in somebody else’s airspace someday to transmit the coronavirus.
And wrestling? It’s just one-on-one, but it’s hard to fathom a season going by without some transmissions, no matter what restrictions you put in place. It’s the nature of the sport.
But the transmissions can be limited and controlled with reasonable safety precautions in all sports, and high schools thus far this school year seem to have done a good job of following those precautions.
And there’s clearly real value in allowing kids to compete. Kids learn lots of good things because of high school sports, things that they can’t really learn elsewhere, and we ought to allow them a chance to participate. As it turns out, we overreacted last spring by eliminating sports that almost certainly could have been conducted safely. Kids that lost that season won’t ever get a chance to get it back.
Winter is the worst season, in terms of the risk, because everything is indoors, where the virus is transmitted much more easily.
But, to reiterate, it’s worth taking a bit of risk. We concur with the board’s decision, and we’ll hope for the best.
