So perhaps the most pressing sports question in my household has nothing to do with the NFL, or the NBA, or about college football. It’s not about what happens to March Madness this year, or even if the Summer Olympics are still on. It’s about rec basketball. More to the point, will we have rec basketball this year?
For the time being, it seems the answer is no, although I can’t say that with complete certainty. I do know that school basketball is off, meaning my 8th grader can’t try out for the Brookside Middle School team. I’m less sure about the range of AAU and travel programs, which traditionally fill the gaping hole between participatory rec leagues and often short-staffed school play. By all accounts, the answer seems to vary both by town and by who you happen to talk to and when. And even if it’s a yes, there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to put together a schedule of other teams to play, at least not yet.
As you can imagine, the prospect of four cold months without the rare release of youth sports is just as worrisome to parents as it is their kids. Especially right now, anyone with dependents living at home looks forward to basically anything that both gets their kids out of the house and moving and offers even a modicum of normalcy to daily life. There is little more satisfying right now watching your kids complain about a questionable offsides call in the final minutes of a soccer game. These are rare moments to be distracted by the trivial angst of youth sports, especially as you now realize how ethereal these grievances actually are. As the parent of two kids that play club soccer, I never imagined I’d look forward to Saturdays in folding chairs so much.
Which is why we all wait with bated breath about what comes next, when fall turns to winter and fields turn to gyms, something we all recognize is far less safe, particularly as caseloads continues to rise. Trying to manage the logical and the emotional at the same time is becoming increasingly difficult, especially with a giant vacuum at the top of the depth chart. Which is why state and local leaders, like Governor Phil Murphy in New Jersey, have tried to add some guardrails to the process. Specifically, Murphy just announced a halt on all inter-state sports tournaments for all indoor sports, which could also be called the hockey rule, where it seems the majority of these events take place. The argument is that transmission happens less on the ice, and more in the hotels and restaurants off it. But all other club and interscholastic activities are still cleared to go, assuming they follow safety protocols and decide they want to, which is where the rubber meets the road. And as increasingly teams find themselves below full strength because a few players are on quarantine from an outbreak at school – or vice versa – well, it all gets pretty complicated. And that’s just logistics.
See, right now, a lot of us parents are asking ourselves two separate but yet interwoven questions. One, can my kids play winter sports, like basketball. And two, should they. In a perfect world, which this most definitely is not, there might be some alignment between these two. But assuming public health might dictate policy decisions these days is like assuming the Jets will have a good draft this offseason. Which means that unless our towns and schools basically make the decision for us, a lot of us are basically having to weight the pros and cons with neither a medical nor psychology license. Basically, when it comes to youth sports this winter, we’ll all just a mash up of Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil.
In our house, we’ve cautiously pushed forward through outdoor sports, including club soccer seasons, local tournaments, and some outdoor basketball clinics. We’re looking at possible teams for the winter – soccer and basketball – but aren’t sure when reasonable risk turns to negligent parenting. We’re increasingly cognizant of the reasons our kids play sports in the first place, which has very little to do with winning or losing. And we’re trying to figure out the short and long-term impact of two boys stuck at home until March, with the occasional treadmill jog to stay active. That is plight of millions of American families right now, where days turn to weeks turn to months, where dysfunctional national policy leaves us here. And where the most important conversations about sports, have nothing to do with the pros.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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