High school sports teams weigh travelling amid pandemic

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This article was published 23/09/2021 (1712 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PANDEMIC policies for high school sports teams are under consideration as players prepare for a new season.

Decisions about travelling to other areas of the province for games amid the COVID-19 pandemic’s fourth wave have been a hot topic of discussion, including concerns about Winnipeg teams travelling to areas of Manitoba that have lower vaccination rates.

School athletic directors have been meeting regularly over the past couple of weeks, and there have been murmurs that some schools may restrict travel to areas such as the Southern Health region because of lower vaccination rates there, but there haven’t been concrete directives in that regard.

“We’ve heard rumours about that but haven’t seen any action taken up on that at all yet, so it’ll be interesting to see in the next few weeks what actually plays out, but we haven’t seen any of that come into play yet,” said Chad Falk, executive director of the Manitoba High School Athletic Association.

The association isn’t allowing high school teams to travel out of province or play against out-of-province teams this season, but as of yet there’s no rule that says teams must stay within their region.

“There certainly is some talk about some school divisions putting some limitations, at least at the start of the school year, on their schools,” Falk said.

The Free Press asked all school divisions in Winnipeg whether they are considering implementing any policies that would mean students can’t travel to less vaccinated areas for games. None of the divisions indicated a clear move toward doing so, but some are considering implementing their own policies on top of current public health orders.

The Louis Riel School Division is considering a draft policy that would require its students participating in extracurricular activities to be fully vaccinated or undergo regular COVID-19 testing.

Metro superintendents discussed extracurricular policies at their September meeting earlier this week. Pembina Trails superintendent Ted Fransen said the situation is fluid and officials are still making decisions — many leagues haven’t started up yet — but he said for now, Pembina Trails is not restricting travel to southern Manitoba.

Teams within the division can still expect to play in Portage la Prairie, for example, Fransen said.

“There’s no question that we’re always monitoring the situation and that we do have concerns about our teams travelling into areas where there’s a very low vaccination rate. Having said that, since our teams are not typically travelling there, we’re not immediately impacted by it, but we will continue to monitor and evaluate the situation.”

Under existing public health orders, players under 18 don’t have to be vaccinated to play sports, but coaches, parents and spectators all must have proof of vaccination.

A few tournaments and exhibition games have already happened in the past two weeks, and there’s been more participation in high school sports so far this year than there was all of last year, Falk said.

“There’s a lot of buzz and excitement about it.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay