A set of greater than 60 highschool athletes, coaches and their households from throughout the state gathered Thursday outdoors the Colorado Division of Public Well being and Surroundings to protest its resolution to postpone winter and spring prep sports activities.
Two police automobiles blocked visitors to permit for gamers carrying handwritten indicators — with messages like SPORTS = MENTAL HEALTH and No purpose for no season! — to cross the road towards CDPHE’s Denver workplaces on South Cherry Creek Drive. They rang cowbells and chanted a well-recognized mantra for all Colorado highschool athletes annoyed by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
“Allow us to play! Allow us to play!”

Their collective purpose: Improve public strain on CHSAA, state authorities and native well being authorities to start sports activities for Season B — together with basketball, ice hockey, snowboarding, wrestling, and women swimming and diving — as beforehand scheduled on Jan. 4 as a substitute of in early February.
“It’s not honest and it’s not proper,” stated Malik Carlson, a junior level guard for the Class 1A Briggsdale boys basketball staff. “We simply wish to exit and play. We had a profitable soccer season and made it to state. They bought to complete it out. I don’t know why they’ll’t do it for basketball. I simply wish to play.”
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Representatives of a number of small-school applications comparable to Rocky Ford swimming (2A) and Bennett wrestling (1A) made the lengthy drive to Denver. Darren Pitzner, head women basketball coach at Inexperienced Mountain (3A), helped set up the protest with LetCoPlay.com to provide athletes, coaches and fogeys a voice within the ongoing debate over the security of indoor sports activities amid the coronavirus pandemic.
There are at present 22 states which have already began highschool basketball seasons, according to MaxPreps.com. Colorado is considered one of solely 5 that doesn’t plan to tip off till February or later.
“Sports activities are clearly a solution right here and never the issue,” Pitzner stated. “The unfold with children is happening at events and social gatherings outdoors of our partitions. The extra construction we will present for them, the safer we will preserve our households, our communities and our children. There are millions of public servants and coaches on this state who’re prepared and keen to offer secure alternatives for youths underneath the precise protocols.
“We are able to curb the unfold by saying sure to children proper now. Allow them to have their passions so our children can change into children once more. They’ll really socialize much less outdoors of our protocols and security that we will present.”
Final week, CDPHE government director Jill Hunsaker, in a press release through CHSAA, stated the choice to postpone winter and spring prep sports activities was primarily based on an absence of “details about what illness incidence and hospitalization capability will appear to be in January” with counties in crimson on the COVID-19 dial prohibited from “indoor group sports activities.” Gov. Jared Polis additionally urged the state droop all highschool extracurricular actions till in-person studying is obtainable in any respect grade ranges.
Pitzner’s rebuttal pointed to a study published in October by the University of Wisconsin school of medicine which surveyed 207 excessive faculties to signify about 30,000 fall sport student-athletes. It discovered that amongst 209 who reported constructive assessments, just one participant indicated it was due to sports activities participation.
Dr. Lisa Miller, a professor of epidemiology on the Colorado College of Public Well being, stated there is no such thing as a good reply for a way communities ought to strategy winter youth sports activities, particularly indoors, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“When you get inside, you’re sharing that very same air area, and the chance goes to go up. There are issues you are able to do to reduce the chance, however I don’t suppose you will get round it until you might have tens-of-millions of {dollars} and may afford the rigorous protocols that skilled sports activities groups have used to soundly do indoor sports activities,” Miller stated, including that top faculty groups can scale back danger by maximizing health club air flow. “Each public well being coverage has penalties. Hopefully, they reduce an infection danger, however in addition they intrude with individuals’s lives — financial, social, and emotional. All of those selections are actually powerful balancing acts.”
Protesters are hopeful their message will immediate native well being authorities to behave shortly, open gymnasiums, and permit winter prep sports activities to begin subsequent month. State officers usually are not anticipated to fulfill till mid-January to renew talks over Season B, according to CHSAA.
Pitzner, turning to the gang of protesters on Thursday, stated: “Let’s be certain that they hear us.”