The wheels, slowly, are starting to turn towards a high school football season.
The Arizona Interscholastic Association, counseled by its Sports Medicine Advisory Committee, announced Thursday a lowering of the community-spread benchmark for contact in practice and competition from 10 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population to 75 per 100,000. The change came after the AIA saw positive results in states that have already begun high school competition, and its significance canβt be understated.
βThat 10-for-100,000 marker would hold everybody up,β Canyon del Oro coach Dustin Peace said. βA few weeks ago, when that got posted, one coach pointed out that Vermont was the only state to have below 10 per 100,000.β
Remaining under 75 per 100,000 isnβt a certainty β Pima County jumped from 49 to 72 recently β but the AIAβs decision breeds optimism.
The Amphitheater School District authorized its three teams β Ironwood Ridge, CDO and Amphi β to practice with helmets starting Monday. The schoolsβ athletic directors will meet the same day to discuss their schedules. Still, coaches say the AIAβs recommended start date of Oct. 2 is probably wishful thinking.
βNot Oct. 2nd; maybe Oct. 16, maybe a week after that,β Peace said. βWeβve got to have so many days of contact and then we can play a game.
βHigh school football is going to be the first thing that enters a group setting of that many kids. Weβll have 45 kids on the field, and essentially this is new ground β not just for sports but for the school in this pandemic.β
The district might be one of the best equipped to handle such a situation.
All three schools are similar in size. Ironwood Ridge is in Class 5A, one level above Amphi and CDO. The coaches know each other well. Peace is in his 12th year at CDO, and Jorge Mendivil is in his seventh at Amphi. While I-Ridge coach James Hardy Jr. is only in his second season, he previously served on Peaceβs staff.
Having a roundtable with just three seats has made it easier to communicate.
βTalking with some of the other coaches around town, I would say thatβs safe to say,β Peace said. βIβm able to talk to our district AD anytime I want to talk to him. So our communication has been really good. But at the end of the day, I think Pima County is all going to be one as far as when we play.β
All three coaches, along with many of their colleagues, wrote a letter in July to the AIA advocating for a spring season. At the heart of their complaints was a desire for some certainty.
Now, for the first time in a long time, they seem to have some.
βItβs nice to get to the point where we can start practice-planning and getting things set in stone to move forward and get ready for the season,β Hardy said. βI told them today, βHey, you guys told me how much you wanted to get back to playing football, and now you have this opportunity. Donβt let it go to waste.ββ