Crowds / Normalcy

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psycho_dad

Well-known member
We had our first meet in nearly 2 years and it went well and seemed normal. It was well attended. Coaches and kids did not seem to have any issues. Have not heard of any issues from any other coaches. I do know of a few teams / schools that have Covid going through the team or at least have had to quarantine a lot of kids because of contact tracing.

It was nice to see a normal track and field meet.

Has anyone had any issues?
 
 
We had our first meet Saturday at Harvey. They went from allowing no fans to the last minute allowing 2 per athlete. Everything went very well, just like old times, besides wearing a mask.
 
Did the Governor say yesterday that outdoor activities are now allowed to be unlimited??
Will all schools follow this?
 
gatornation said:
Also, does the virus exist if it is over 80 degrees?
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I detect a bit of sarcasm, but some data from last summer exists to answer that question.

The meet I was supposed to attend last weekend was allowing 1 spectator per athlete (15-team meet at a small school). Of course, it was cancelled due to projected weather conditions. Meet I'm slated to attend this weekend is not planning on having any spectator limitations (meet size unknown but mid-sized school w/ larger stadium capacity). My school would be unlikely to impose any spectator limitations. The stadium's capacity is far greater than what is needed for most football games anymore, let alone track meets. We overbuilt that sucker. It was completed about 3 or 4 years before the peak of the attendance figures for the HS football finals. Could've saved a bundle on reduced seating and bathrooms if built 5-10 years later.

Incidentally, my school was hit hard with cases last week. The only spring sports to not be suspended so far are boys tennis and girls track. Also, football had a case from a kid participating in offseason lifting which shut down the weightroom (to eliminate it as a source of congregation), and a couple other students were quarantined from participating in an indoor club soccer tournament. Some older kids are beginning the vaccination process, but the girls team is primarily comprised of girls under 16 who won't be eligible to be vaccinated for awhile. The boys team is significantly older with most being over 16. Also, the school is on Easter Break now, and a fair number of students traditionally leave town for it (top 2 female sprinters are gone as are a couple distance runners). Plus, we've generally seen spikes following the other major holidays during the past 13 months. It's going to be a challenge to navigate through all of this to get to mid-May. The team's numbers aren't great even at full strength, so even if a full shutdown is avoided, intermittent quarantining will make it difficult to properly evaluate everyone in order to create the most effective lineup for the postseason.

Having said all of that, it's better than having no season at all, even if it sometimes doesn't feel like it.
 
We have had some Covid cases on the team, but so far no indications of it spreading on the team. That said, there is an uptick of cases in the school district and we just got back from a spring break in which a lot of people traveled out of town. So we have our fingers crossed, our athletes spread out and our masks firmly in place.

Our first meet was last Friday and there were two tickets per athlete. Our next is this evening, with the same restrictions on numbers of spectators. My first gut reaction from one meet of our own and one for my son is that attendance is up a little compared to a normal year. But I don't know that this will hold. It might be that telling people "you can only have two tickets" is making parents who normally don't attend actually come to meets.
 
mathking said:
We have had some Covid cases on the team, but so far no indications of it spreading on the team. That said, there is an uptick of cases in the school district and we just got back from a spring break in which a lot of people traveled out of town. So we have our fingers crossed, our athletes spread out and our masks firmly in place.

Our first meet was last Friday and there were two tickets per athlete. Our next is this evening, with the same restrictions on numbers of spectators. My first gut reaction from one meet of our own and one for my son is that attendance is up a little compared to a normal year. But I don't know that this will hold. It might be that telling people "you can only have two tickets" is making parents who normally don't attend actually come to meets.
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It seemed like our meets have been better attended than I remember too. I could be wrong and it's just me not being used to any "crowds" at all.

I do know that I was told we already hit the break even for the concession stand, so the season is a success off the track already.
 
In the last two weeks I have been reading a ton of stuff about increasing spread of Covid in youth sports. My statistics training is pushing me toward the idea that some of that is due to the variants, but some of the increase isn't really an increase, it's that we are now actually looking for it. Previously, in most places we were not really doing anything to try to find infections in kids, so it is no wonder we were not seeing them.

In any event, one thing that worries me a lot now is that this increase may again mess up the spring sports season. There have been a lot of spreading events associated with school and club sports, but almost all with wrestling, hockey, basketball, gymnastics and swimming. (In descending order.) Indoor sports. So I am hoping that we can demonstrate that we can be responsible (make sure kids wear their masks when they are supposed to and try to keep them spread out as much as possible) and that outdoor sports are significantly less problematic than indoor sports. I have seen a health department official at a meet (it was a neighbor of mine) checking it out. Thankfully the adherence to the rules by the teams there was pretty good.
 
While the health order no longer limits capacity for outdoor events, the health order does cite that non-family groups need to be six-feet apart from one another so that should/could limit seating. I have zero idea how that is monitored or complied in high school facilities beyond the blue x's that were used during football games.
 
No limits. No masks.. just like nothing happened.
"just like nothing happened"????
We eventually have to come out of this and go back to normal. I am not saying we are there yet but to say, just like nothing happened seems a bit extreme. It did happen but like I said, we eventually have to come out of this. It bothers me when I read or hear things like this. We are not stuck in this forever. We do eventually have to come out of this on the other side.
 
gatornation said:
No limits. No masks.. just like nothing happened.
"just like nothing happened"????
We eventually have to come out of this and go back to normal. I am not saying we are there yet but to say, just like nothing happened seems a bit extreme. It did happen but like I said, we eventually have to come out of this. It bothers me when I read or hear things like this. We are not stuck in this forever. We do eventually have to come out of this on the other side.
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Eventually we are just going to have to live with this virus. The vaccination campaign in the USA is definitely been impressive thus far, compared with the rest of the world. But lets face it, vaccine hesitancy is never going to allow us to vaccinate enough people to attain herd immunity. Look at what is happening in israel. The vaccination push, while promising to start, has resulted in only 58% of the israeli population being vaccinated. I doubt greatly they will reach 70% in anything resembling a decent timeframe. I expect we will find ourselves in a similar position in the United States by June. Meanwhile new variants will keep popping up that will reduce the efficacy of the vaccines. Especially since most of the third world will not have a prayer of reaching herd immunity until 2022 at the earliest. All this makes it hard to believe that Covid is gonna disappear anytime soon. We are just going to have to learn to accept covid as a clear and present risk in life, just like any other disease. And live with it.
 
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CoventryTrackXCguy said:
Eventually we are just going to have to live with this virus. The vaccination campaign in the USA is definitely been impressive thus far, compared with the rest of the world. But lets face it, vaccine hesitancy is never going to allow us to vaccinate enough people to attain herd immunity. Look at what is happening in israel. The vaccination push, while promising to start, has resulted in only 58% of the israeli population being vaccinated. I doubt greatly they will reach 70% in anything resembling a decent timeframe. I expect we will find ourselves in a similar position in the United States by June. Meanwhile new variants will keep popping up that will reduce the efficacy of the vaccines. Especially since most of the third world will not have a prayer of reaching herd immunity until 2022 at the earliest. All this makes it hard to believe that Covid is gonna disappear anytime soon. We are just going to have to learn to accept covid as a clear and present risk in life, just like any other disease. And live with it.
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Herd immunity is expected to be here by July and by August 85% of the population will either have had it or had the vaccinations. I agree that we will always have to deal with this, just like any other virus.
 
gatornation said:
No limits. No masks.. just like nothing happened.
"just like nothing happened"????
We eventually have to come out of this and go back to normal. I am not saying we are there yet but to say, just like nothing happened seems a bit extreme. It did happen but like I said, we eventually have to come out of this. It bothers me when I read or hear things like this. We are not stuck in this forever. We do eventually have to come out of this on the other side.
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We aren't out of it yet though, so we can't be acting like we are. I've talked to quite a few coaches in different sports that are dealing with outbreaks at the school / parents / family. Two different people that said the health department was monitoring their meets and one that said "they were not impressed." We've told the kids that there are stupid rules that have to be followed. Some that make absolutely no sense. Others that do make sense. Just do what we are asked and we can have a season. All seems normal at our meets so far except masks. We need to keep it up so that the kids have a complete season like they have in other sports so far this year. The kids seem to be doing their part. We can suck it up for another month and a half. No limits and no masks is not going to cut it if a county health inspector shows up. Let's just get to the finish line. No point needs to be made. No stance needs to be taken. No one needs to be right and no one needs to be wrong. Just do the little things so that the kids can keep participating.
 
Jaws31 said:
Herd immunity is expected to be here by July and by August 85% of the population will either have had it or had the vaccinations. I agree that we will always have to deal with this, just like any other virus.
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I wish I shared your optimism. I dont think we cross 60%. I hope you are right, and I'm wrong.
 
Just went to a meet at East Palestine this Saturday. No presale tickets. Pay at the gate. Decent crowd. I believe 23 teams. I'll guess 90-95% masked up. Great weather for all. I'll be at the Mahoning County meet at Fitch this weekend-usually 16 teams. Probably will be more crowded due to all 16 teams being local.
And jaws31. Likens looked good in all of his events. Appears to be more muscular, more explosive
 
nupanther said:
Just went to a meet at East Palestine this Saturday. No presale tickets. Pay at the gate. Decent crowd. I believe 23 teams. I'll guess 90-95% masked up. Great weather for all. I'll be at the Mahoning County meet at Fitch this weekend-usually 16 teams. Probably will be more crowded due to all 16 teams being local.
And jaws31. Likens looked good in all of his events. Appears to be more muscular, more explosive
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It was a pretty good crowd, will be the same or bigger this week. 27 boys and 27 girls teams. They originally said limited to 700 fans but seemed like there was more.

He has gotten bigger and much stronger. Has put on about 15 or so lbs since the end of football. That was a pretty good field in the sprints. Times were a bit off but they went into a pretty stiff headwind. Even Clinkscale was a little slow on the girls side(if you can say meet records are slow) she'll be high 11.6s low 11.7s this season if I had to guess. Likens and Paige from VC will go under 11 FAT.
 
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