Let them play

In the 1977 film "The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training," the Astrodome crowd chants, "Let them play! Let them play!" when the umpires attempt to stop a youth baseball game due to a time limit.Such a sentiment has been common in the world of Ohio high school sports since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last March.State government and the Ohio High School Athletic Association weren't having it last spring and scrapped the season for baseball, softball, boys tennis and track and field.Teams returned to action in the fall with a variety of restrictions in place, and now it's a bit trickier in the winter with everything having moved indoors, with quarters being closer.Wearing masks, social-distancing and temperature-taking have proliferated, while the numbers of fans allowed in the stands has dropped, all in the name of attempting to keep people safe from the highly contagious and sometimes deadly COVID-19 — an illness that has impacted the world like no other in history.But as schools continue to educate students, whether in-person or virtually, sports are seen as important enough to conduct as part of students' overall experience."My goal from July on has always been to do whatever we needed to let kids play sports," Hopewell-Loudon athletic director Brian Colatruglio said in an email. "Sports are such an important part of the overall development and health of kids and we needed them to be able to participate."There have been many difficulties and inconveniences that come with that, but when I keep that original goal in mind, everything else is just details. I would love to have packed gyms this winter, and eventually, if we don't get back to normal, there will be a financial impact of all of this, but for now we just want to play the games."Michele Wolf, Fostoria High School's athletic director, expressed similar feelings, noting that flexibility is a key component."Aside from student/coach/official/staff/spectator safety, making sure students have as many opportunities to compete as possible has been our focus," she said in an email. "Our district is well-equipped with needed materials and resources so that our coaches can employ all of the precautions and policies in place."However, the things out of our control pose the biggest challenge. For example, we can't control where our athletes go after practice and on weekends and have to hope for their best judgment with potential exposure. My saving grace has been a baseline of flexibility. As all of this began to unfold, all of the ADs in the northwest district began meeting regularly to exchange ideas, etc. It was clear that at some point this year, each one of us would likely have to do with a positive test and/or quarantine, and working together in the best interest of all of our athletes is the only option. At this point in the year, that is almost the regular. From parents to opposing teams, everyone has been very understanding with quarantines and exposures, as inconvenient as those may become."As our rescheduled games begin to stack up and we get closer and closer to tournament time, getting all of the scheduled games in is a growing concern. It's a fragile balance between making sure our teams don't get run down in the last month and making sure our seniors get to play a full schedule, or at least close to it."Fostoria boys basketball coach Thom Loomis, from the get-go, has dealt with concerns about differences in the structure of students' days, with about 60% attending school in-person and following a specific schedule and the other 40 opting to learn virtually and largely doing their work on their own terms.Loomis said he's found his players to perform best when held to a structured situation."I was like, 'This is like nothing I have ever had to deal with,'" said Loomis, who is retired from a long career in a variety of education-related roles. "As a principal, as a teacher, as a coach, you're always trying to work with your kids and make sure they remember they're students first. But their whole life was disrupted from having a structure and a routine. ... From our basketball players' aspect, there is no doubt that our kids function a million times better with structure and a routine. And when they don't have structure and a routine, they get lost easily."The Redmen have put together a record of 8-7 overall and 3-6 in the Northern Buckeye Conference while having had to go through two temporary shutdowns despite following a strict daily protocol and having their temperatures taken and completing a QR code on their phones to aid in contact tracing.Senior Dom Settles was one of two FHS varsity players to test positive for the virus, which kept him out of school for two weeks."The first day (Jan. 6), when I woke up, I had a really bad headache and a really high fever," he said. "So, I went and got tested and my results came back the next day and I still had a headache and a fever. After two or three days, it kind of went away. I mean, I lost my (senses of) taste and smell and I just got that back. It sucks because it makes you not want to eat anything; you can't even taste it."Despite the bump in the road, Settles is happy that a season was even allowed."I would have been devastated," he said of the prospect of not playing this season. "It's my senior year, so I was really excited. ... Basketball's like everything to me, almost. I love playing basketball and if we wouldn't have been able to have a season, it would have just totally sucked. It would have sucked bad."I'm glad they made it happen — super-glad they made it happen."The pandemic made athletes and their families decide whether they wanted to take the additional risk of contracting the virus by participating in a comparatively large-scale activity on a daily basis."I was really worried about it because, yes, sports are really super important and people want to play sports and stuff, but is it worth risking your own health?" senior Fostoria cheerleader Dakota Mason said. "But, I guess, if they still want to do it and they still really love it, it is still worth it. We all had to make (the decision), individually, if we wanted to play or not. For some of the seniors out here, we've been doing this for four years now. Do we really want to give up our senior year? Do you want to or do you not want to? That was a choice everybody had to make. The people who are playing, obviously, were willing to risk it. They thought they could put their health at risk."Hopewell-Loudon senior basketball standout MaKayla Elmore, who has signed a letter of intent to play at Clemson University, was pleased to get back on the court after a serious injury to her right knee ended her junior season and left the Chieftains without her all-Ohio capabilities as they fell short of their goal of reaching the state tournament."Ever since I got hurt last season and couldn't finish out the tournament, I definitely wanted a senior season to just come back and make a run for it," Elmore said. "We got cut short last year. We didn't make it to where we wanted to. Coming off my injury, I wanted to come back and at least play one game my senior season. "Now, we're like, 15-0," she said prior to a win over Calvert. "It means a lot."The Chieftains' girls squad has experienced no positive tests, and their schedule has been altered at times only due to other schools' situations.H-L coach Bob Gase said his squad's success in that regard has been a complete team effort on the school grounds in terms of safety protocol."The school here has done a great job of keeping everybody, as a whole, healthy," he said. "And the girls have done a great job of policing each other. We've been very, very fortunate that we haven't been shut down. I have 12 girls off the volleyball team, and they got shut down. And I think because of that, they knew how it felt to be shut down and it's actually helped us watch more closely what we're doing."Said senior Abbe Beidelschies: "We've been trying our best to stay home whenever we can — just go from school to practice and back home and not go out and do a bunch of things, just in case. You never know who you're around might have it. We're just trying to be the safest we can outside of basketball, too."Senior Hope Kreais said the inconveniences have been minor."It's not been terrible," she said. "Just a few things have changed. But I'm still playing sports, so I have no complaints."Everyone everywhere wishes crowds could be larger, but the biggest concern has been enabling the athletes to play."We're all grateful to have a season and blessed that people gave us a chance to play our last season together," H-L senior Olivia Zender said.