When the Minnesota Department of Health recommended youth sports teams in Carver County pause their seasons because of an outbreak of the B117 COVID variant, an already difficult winter got more unwieldy for Dawson Blanck and Minnesota Youth Athletic Services.
On short notice, Blanck’s group had to find a way for 34 teams of junior high-age players to play in their state championships last weekend. The Health Department wanted more testing, so that’s what MYAS did.
“We got blasted,” Blanck said.
Blanck’s group required those 34 teams based in Carver Country to get tests three days before the tournaments started. If all the results were negative — players, coaches, scorekeepers — they could play. Fourteen teams chose to end their seasons, while 20 went through the testing.
Of those 20 teams, 18 came back without a positive test and were able to finish their seasons.
That’s been the story of youth sports since they were allowed to resume play on a limited basis last summer. As coronavirus cases have ebbed and surged, hundreds of community associations — and thousands of players and parents — have adjusted.
“A lot of people have made sacrifices to make this happen,” Blanck said.
Teams have been quarantined, some because of positive tests on other teams. Players have become accustomed to playing in masks. Parents at times have not been allowed to watch their kids play. Yet MYAS was able to finish its basketball season last weekend. So was Twin Cities Soccer Leagues.
Minnesota Hockey is nearly done, as well, with its regional and state tournaments set for this weekend and next. “We just want to urge all of our teams to do whatever it takes to get us to that finish line,” Minnesota Hockey executive director Glen Andresen said.
That, MDH assistant commissioner Dan Huff said, means no team dinners, no team sleepovers, no getting together after games or practices.
VARIANTS PROVING MORE CONTAGIOUS
Although a set of loosened state COVID restrictions went into effect on Monday, MDH leaders in an afternoon news conference expressed concern about growing numbers of people testing positive with variant forms of the virus that has killed nearly 535,000 Americans over the past year.
Those variants, including the B117 found in a cluster of recent Carver County COVID-19 tests, are proving to be more contagious than the one first seen in the U.S. in February 2020.
Cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to decline nationwide as more Americans get one of the COVID-19 vaccinations approved for emergency use. More than 1.26 million Minnesotans have had at least one dose of vaccine, MDH Commissioner Jan Malcolm said Monday.
New COVID cases jumped slightly in Minnesota, from 1.1 percent to 1.6 percent over the past two weeks, but the rate of hospitalization is down to 260 Minnesotans, 58 of which were in intensive care. On Dec. 14, those numbers were 1,283 and 319, respectively.
“While we’re all pleased, we need to keep an eye on the fact that there is still a lot of virus activity,” Malcolm said.
Cases in Carver County, which comprises southwest metro communities including Chanhassen, Chaska and Waconia, have been rising at rates similar to October, in part because of the B117, or “UK” variant. That induced the MDH to call for a pause in the county’s youth sports on March 6.
It’s also why the MDH is recommending more testing among youth athletes, even when symptoms don’t present.
LOOKING TO WARMER MONTHS AHEAD
Gov. Tim Walz announced last week that he will loosen capacity restrictions on indoor and outdoor entertainment venues starting April 1, allowing about 25 percent capacity in places such as Target Field, Allianz Field, CHS Field and Xcel Energy Center. By the calendar, that includes high school hockey semifinals and finals and the basketball tournaments at Target Center.
Asked why MDH doesn’t simply pause youth sports, as it did for more than a month during November and December, Huff said, “We are balancing many aspects of health — emotional health, mental health, physical health — as well as this pandemic. Our goal is to be as open as possible without creating increased risk for everyone in our state, as we saw happen so quickly back around Thanksgiving, when we hit exponential growth and our hospitals became strained and it was very much a crisis.
“So, it is about using these smart measures to make sure that we can continue to do these things as safely as possible while acknowledging that while we’re interacting during a pandemic, there are risks there.”
Matt Tiano, CEO of Twin Cities Soccer Leagues, said his group just finished its winter season. Of about 250 participating teams, Tiano estimated there were 15 that had to pause for quarantine after positive tests. The TCSL will begin its spring/summer season in mid-April with about 950 teams.
By then, teams will be playing outdoors, and Tiano hopes players won’t have to wear masks while competing on the field.
“I do feel like soccer’s been a leader in the implementation of a number of protocols, and because the number of teams we’ve had quarantine makes me realistically optimistic that we’ll have something like a normal spring season,” Tiano said.
Blanck, too, hopes the mask mandate for competing players will be lifted in time for MYAS’ baseball and softball seasons, also set to begin in mid-April. He also acknowledged that while there was opposition to the mask mandate when first enacted Jan. 1, players and officials have become accustomed to it.
Just as parents became accustomed to wearing wristbands and waiting outside between games, venues accepted making less money and spending more to clean between games.
“What I really take out of this is the willingness of all the youth association leaders to buy into everything when we came out of the pause,” Blanck said. “It wasn’t easy on their part to follow the protocols.”
But, he noted, they did it.
"difficult" - Google News
March 16, 2021 at 06:57AM
https://ift.tt/3bNGovg
Pandemic has made it a long, difficult winter for youth sports - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
"difficult" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2VWzYBO
https://ift.tt/3d5eskc
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Pandemic has made it a long, difficult winter for youth sports - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press"
Post a Comment