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Last year Joy Parazette was one of only two freshmen to make Lamar High School’s junior-varsity team. “I want to play volleyball in college,” the 15-year-old wrote in a statement for college recruiters, “because volleyball is my life.”
For her mom, artist Sharon Engelstein, that was the problem. Sharon doesn’t want to crush Joy’s dream. But she’s also terrified that volleyball could expose Joy to COVID-19.
Summer wasn’t so bad. Joy turned down invitations to unofficial indoor practices. To stay in shape, she played beach volleyball, with lots of fresh outdoor air to blow the virus away.
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Sharon, meanwhile, dreaded the fall. Would the Lamar team practice and play indoors? If they did, what precautions would be in place? Would the players wear masks on court? Would they ride buses to games? What would happen when a player tested positive? Shouldn’t the district cancel fall sports until the threat had passed?
Sharon looked online, with no luck, for official guidance from the University Interscholastic League, the governing body for Texas school sports. She read nervously about college athletes testing positive. She called the coach, went to booster games, talked with HISD’s athletic director.
The answers she got didn’t make her feel better. On Sept. 9, the Lamar team was scheduled to start practice — inside the gym, Sharon noted grimly. For safety’s sake, all Houston ISD schools are holding classes online through mid-October. So starting after Labor Day, players would take classes at home online, then go to school at the end of the day for indoor practice.
“I feel like we’re playing Covid roulette,” Sharon said.
A ‘big experiment’
Sharon is hardly the only parent struggling to navigate Covid-era school sports. Across Texas, athletic programs’ pandemic responses vary wildly. The UIL has issued a few safety rules, and it sets the earliest dates that schools can begin their seasons (August for small schools, September for big ones).
But many other decisions fall to school districts, schools and coaches. A couple of districts in Covid-battered South Texas went so far as to cancel their fall sports programs altogether, but so far, most Texas high schools are going ahead. Some require masks at practice; some don’t. Some practice only outdoors; some don’t.
Though the number of reported cases in the Houston area is dropping, scientists warn that the disease still isn’t under control here, and that reopening schools under those conditions is, as UTHealth epidemiologist Catherine Troisi put it, a “big experiment.”
For better or worse, the first data from that experiment is likely to come from high-school athletes. They often began practice alongside their teammates before most other students were allowed on campus. Their sports bring them close to other players. They breathe heavily, which means an asymptomatic player could spew virus far into the air. And at a game, it would be easy for the virus to jump from one school to another.
Young people infected with COVID are far less likely to require hospital care; epidemiologists’ warnings have focused mainly on those whom the students might infect, such as teachers or family members. But there’s growing evidence that even the healthiest young people can suffer serious long-term effects, even from mild or asymptomatic cases. For instance, one recent small study of college athletes found that 15 percent of those infected suffered heart damage that could make it dangerous for them to play.
The NBA can play in a bubble, and all Big 12 football players can be tested three times per week. But neither of those plans is an option at your average Houston high school.
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Practice in the gym
This week, like most HISD students, Joy started the new school year at home, in front of her computer, on Tuesday. After her regular classes were over, she headed to Lamar for volleyball strength-and-conditioning practice. The players answered questions about their health, and their temperatures were checked. To work out, they spaced themselves far apart in the school’s large gym.
Sharon worried that they should have been outside. Joy complained that her mask got sweaty.
On Thursday, at the last minute, strength and conditioning session was moved to Pershing Middle School.
Friday they found out why: HISD announced that someone at Lamar had been diagnosed with Covid.
Sharon worried that next time, it could be her daughter.
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lisa.gray@chron.com, twitter.com/LisaGray_HouTX