Contrary to the heavy breathing that you hear, there is no War on Football, not like the War on Cigarettes or Polio.
There is risk, as there is with crossing streets while wearing headphones. But no one is trying to extract football from our culture, as if that were possible.
Today the parks are full of high school quarterbacks throwing to high school receivers, or high school linemen stretching resistance bands.
The game is alive. It’s just homeless.
“We had 160 kids when we started and they were chomping at the bit,” said Dan O’Shea, the coach at Corona del Mar.
“When we started, we had 70 out there,” said Dameon Porter, the coach at Crespi. “Not too long after that, we had 90.”
But then everyone had to stop. Opening Night is Jan. 8 for City Section and Southern Section teams, and Porter asks us not to forget soccer and water polo and all the other fall sports that also stand in place.
“Most of our skilled players were going to run track last spring and then couldn’t,” Porter said.
So all the unplayed football, trapped in the reservoir, may be released in a mighty roar. But what if it isn’t? How many hours can you stare at a 2009 Sentra before you realize that it won’t become an F-16?
Until somebody else tries it, and goes through the systematic torture of waiting for the tests to return, we won’t know when our Friday nights will get lit.
“There’s a lot of questions,” O’Shea said. “Is there a sport with more combative, hand-to-hand combat? You have 10-man piles on a normal tackle. We have yet to decipher a code on that.”
Porter says it’s all conjecture until the “medicine men,” the health professionals, come up with some sort of legitimate vaccine or treatment.
“It all depends on your definition of safe, that’s the buzzword,” he said. “There are some less populated states that will be playing, Population density, like we have, drives the spread. I have trouble seeing how we can do that, at least in California, without some medical event.”
Logistics also come into play. If coaches can only work with 10-player pods for 30 minutes, that means football at Corona del Mar becomes an eight-hour situation.
“The first day that we can throw and catch a football will be exciting in itself,” Porter said. “Maybe you can bring two pods together. You need all that work for timing in your passing game, for quarterbacking development.”
Eighteen states are not going to let the coronavirus tell them what to do. They are playing as scheduled. Thirteen others are staying on shore to see if anybody drowns, but plan to start later in the fall. The West Coast states, plus Nevada and Arizona, are waiting until 2021.
By then we might know if the “splash shields” on the helmets actually stop the alien droplets.
“I used to play with them,” Porter said. “I didn’t like them from a comfort standpoint. Do they work to prevent the exchange? Yes, 100 percent. But air is going to get underneath the face masks. There are a lot of mitigating steps to take. In the end it’ll be best for everyone when we get some medical accomplishments.’
The reason the high school questions are so poignant is that they center on real lives. These aren’t college players who rumble about exploitation while they get free schooling, meals and health care, on top of all the $200 handshakes.
Most high schoolers will not play another down of football and are paying, in various ways, to play these. They are playing for their own scrapbooks. They are constructing a Memory Lane. They are taking enough risk without inviting a virus that comes up with a new, life-wrecking side effect every week.
“We’re trying to get activities for our kids,” O’Shea said. “Mental health is as important as physical. It’s tough to account for kids who have gotten out of sync. It’s the secret silent warrior.
“It will be a chore. We’ll be practicing through Christmas, New Year’s, MLK Day, President’s Day. But it’s a wild world. I’m 51. It’s not like I’ve been through really dramatic things like the Depression or World War II. This is our thing.”
In the end Porter borrows a motto from locker room walls.
“So what, now what?” he said, laughing. “Maybe we’ll play on Saturdays, or in the afternoon. We’ll adjust. I really believe we’re going to have some dialed-in kids. If we do play in January it’s going to be some of the best football you’ve ever seen.”
It isn’t quite a promise. It’s certainly not a threat.
"bring" - Google News
August 19, 2020 at 03:36AM
https://ift.tt/3kWdN9A
Whicker: The schedule is set. Can the high schools bring it to life? - OCRegister
"bring" - Google News
https://ift.tt/38Bquje
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Whicker: The schedule is set. Can the high schools bring it to life? - OCRegister"
Post a Comment