(guitar music) - COVID-19 has robbed many of us of the things that are important.

Some of you can't check on loved ones living in long-term care facilities, or don't wanna risk getting that elective surgery you scheduled before last March.

And now, let's talk specifically about student athletes who've also seen loss.

For them, it's one, maybe even two years of tape to show college recruiters.

The bonding experience of playing together with friends on a team.

It's a learning process of working with a coach, and it's the experience of pushing yourself to achieve what you may not have thought you could.

And no competition to speak of the last couple of months of the coronavirus pandemic, young minds are left to pick up the pieces, forced to look elsewhere for reinforcement.

For Connecticut public, I'm Frankie Graziano.

This is Cutline.

(ambient music) Youth sports have been shut down by state officials the past couple of months in Connecticut.

And that's because of the continued spread of coronavirus.

This hour, we'll take a look at what student athletes stand to lose in a pandemic without a competition.

What about their parents?

What's it like for them to watch their kids go through this sports shutdown?

You'll hear unique perspectives and you'll also hear from the decision-makers, the people tasked with determining whether or not play should continue as the virus spreads.

But first, how did we get to this point?

10 months on from when everything changed, when COVID-19 hit Connecticut.

It all began on March 10th with the State canceling winter championships.

Students, coaches and parents actually rallied outside of the headquarters of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference in Cheshire protesting them.

On March 16th, students were sent home for remote learning through the governor's executive order.

Then on April 23rd, the CIAC announced the cancellation of spring sports championships as well.

They still had the intention of playing games in June.

May 5th, the day after the governor said that the rest of the academic year would be conducted through distance learning, the CIAC took its cues essentially from the State Department of Education, giving up on spring games.

On July 6th, student athletes, began fall sports conditioning programs and cohorts.

Later that month, the CIAC released a fall's sports return to play plan with competition slated for late September.

On August 23rd, here is where things started to go back and forth between the State's Department of Public Health and the CIAC on whether or not some sports should be played.

The DPH sent a letter to the CIAC recommending that traditional high school tackle football and indoor volleyball shouldn't be played during the pandemic.

In late August, the start of in-person schooling was delayed, conditioning stopped, and the start of the sports season was delayed a week.

On September 4th, the CIAC said no football in the fall.

And later that month on September 25th, the Connecticut Department of Public Health, categorized wrestling, cheer, dance and boys lacrosse as high-risk.

On October 1st, good news for our student athletes in Connecticut.

The fall sports season started without high school football.

Cross country, girls volleyball, boys and girls soccer, and field hockey, were the sports played.

The fall sports regular season ended on November 7th.

And later that month on November 21st, last day of a tournament experience related to play for CIAC member schools.

On November 23rd though, is the day that sports stopped, the state halting public and private sports.

And as of late December, the state expanded its ban on interstate hockey tournaments into February over continued concern over the potential for a super spreader event.

Glenn Lungarini is the CIAC's executive director.

Glenn, thank you for joining us.

- My pleasure, Frankie.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today.

- Even though it was like 10 months ago now, I remember the day the winter sports championships, were abandoned, like it was yesterday.

Decision was met with controversy, I don't have to tell you that.

But hundreds of students, coaches, and parents flooded the parking lot at your headquarters in Cheshire.

They wanted you to address them.

And when you did, it's not like you were welcomed with open arms.

I know it's 10 months on now, but what can you tell me about having to make such a difficult decision at that point?

- We had to make a very difficult choice, but sometimes in positions of leadership, that's the decision that you have to make.

Sometimes it's the unpopular one, but you do it when you know that it's in the best interest of the health and safety of everybody in our school community.

And above all else, we place the health and safety of our student athletes first.

So we made that difficult decision.

As you said, for about 24 or 48 hours, I think we were the most hated people in Connecticut.

And you know, 48 to 72 hours later, it was just shown that we were the first to lead what was a shutdown of the entire sports world.

- And the CIAC have been crowning State Championships, since the 20s.

For some perspective, that includes during World War II, so COVID-19 broke the string.

I've interviewed you many times over the course of the pandemic, and we talked about how your actions are guided by state COVID-19 data.

What are the numbers have to show Glenn, to you for play to pick up again, like what's your baseline?

- So that is a moving target, Frankie.

And a lot of it is based on what we've come to know about the virus.

So the importance isn't necessarily a specific number, it's continued communication with our medical experts which have been the Connecticut State Medical Society Sports Med Committee.

They have just been a phenomenal group of diverse doctors from many disciplines that have been able to provide expert insight to us that have guided our actions and of course, the direction of the State Department of Health and the governor's office.

When they feel that it's safe for us to continue athletics and for youth to continue athletics, we will be ready to go.

For the CIAC, it has been a priority of our board as much as possible to impact the spring season minimally.

So we are looking to have as much of a full spring season with state tournaments as possible, because those kids lost everything last year.

- Before going into like the ramp up and looking into the future a little bit, I wanna go back a little bit and say that you made difficult decisions when the pandemic began as you mentioned for winter and for spring sports, but you carried on with fall sports.

I just wanna go back a little bit.

Why did the metrics at that point support a fall sports season?

- At that point, you know, the metrics are in alignment with our standards from the state and DPH supported low to moderate risk activities moving forward.

We had put together mitigating strategies to support that and hopefully reduce the risks even further.

We're very excited that, now that we're able to look at the collection and analyze that data, it shows that the mitigation strategies we put in place were effective.

We had just over 28,000 athletes participate in the fall season.

Conservatively, we played just over 33,000 games and practices.

And from our data collection, we had 133 of 186 schools participate in our data collection.

And we had seven total cases that came back to intra-team spread.

So spread within a team, a total of seven cases.

Out of 28,000 athletes, over 33,000 events, it was a transmission rate of 0.02%.

So we're confident that we did put out mitigation strategies that provided a safe experience for kids, and that gives us confidence as we move forward that we can continue to engage kids in a very safe manner, even in a COVID climate when playing sports.

- I know it's been a tense year on the job, but there might not have been a controversy like there was in the run-up to the fall sports season where the prospect of holding tackle football on a pandemic was debated so openly in public.

You tried to get the season off the ground but the Department of Public Health ultimately didn't support that effort.

Before we get into why you wanted football to be played at that point, can you get into the back and forth a little bit that you had with DPH and why in your opinion you might have think that that became like a center stage item?

- You know, we've had a very good relationship with the Department of Health.

Our discussions with them really began in late July and then continued into mid August.

As you said, the timing unfortunately, didn't play out in terms of us having information when maybe we would have had some other things to consider.

But all of our decisions were always based on when we receive new information or we receive updated guidance for DPH, it would be reconsidered.

That was true in the fall, that's true now.

We've had a very good relationship with DPH.

We continue to collaborate with them.

Even through the winter season, we are having discussions with them now as we approach the start of the winter season so I think the perception is largely based on what was kind of written and portrayed about that maybe in the media or in public opinion on social media, but in terms of CIAC's relationship with DPH, I think it's always been very collaborative and positive.

- We know the potential for COVID-19 transmission ratchets up when people gather indoors.

That's the reason why many restaurants will offer like an outdoor dining experience in the middle of winter.

You confident that local schools can pull off a basketball season for example?

- I am.

And that confidence comes as well as to understanding not only the risks that may be involved in playing the contest, but understanding the risks that surround a game.

So again, a recommendation that fans may not be in attendance.

That was a recommendation of the CIAC in the fall is that you don't have fans, but again, if we give our schools the information that they need to be able to comply with the sector rules on what the limitations of outdoor gatherings, sports venues and arenas are from the state level.

So our schools have the most accurate and up-to-date information that they can have to provide that safe experience for the kids.

And just as we showed in the fall, we did do it safely at that point, we do believe we can do it safely again.

And we just need cooperation from everybody involved understanding that what we're trying to do is provide experiences for the kids.

- This age category doesn't represent the most vulnerable population but there's always a chance student athletes could pass on the virus to loved ones.

We know that beyond the 14-day coronavirus incubation period too that COVID-19 has lasting effects on the infected.

Right now appears though that there's a slim chance, according to the journal of the American Medical Association, the athletes who get COVID-19 could develop a heart condition for example called myocarditis.

So I had to ask you Glenn, why risk it and why hold sports at this point?

- Right, again, as we're learning much more about this, I think we can make more educated decisions on it.

Again, with the myocarditis from the medical standpoint, my understanding, myocarditis is not unique to COVID.

That condition does exist with other viruses as well.

And the protocol that has been in place for quite some time in terms of being a fever-free for 72 hours before returning to competition in my understanding has a lot to do with what was previously known about viruses that may produce a myocarditis effect.

So we are learning more about how myocarditis and COVID interact with each other and what the long-term effects of that might be.

It is something that we need to continue to discuss and something that we need to continue to work with the medical community to understand and is something that we should all take seriously, which we do.

But again, it's not something that I think is unique to COVID, but something that we have to be aware of that is apparent in COVID.

- Glenn, I don't envy the position that you're in.

There's a lot of decisions to be made and you've made them and thank you for going through them with us right now.

Thank you for joining us as well.

- My pleasure, thank you for the time.

- Throughout this edition of Cutline, Playing with COVID, you'll see and hear from young people about life as a teenager in a pandemic.

We asked them to film themselves answering the following question.

Why do you need sports right now?

It's kind of like a temperature check.

Only we're trying to measure a student athletes mindset in a time of great uncertainty.

- I was fortunate enough to have a cross country season.

And although I had to spend the majority of it in small groups and wearing a mask, I was still incredibly grateful for the chance to train and to see my friends.

And it helped to bring some normalcy back to my life.

- The effect that this whole restriction is having on me personally is not being able to have my family at my games to show them how much I've improved as I played since last year, or even having the excitement of competing in front of an audience.

I miss my team and just being able to have a second family around to motivate and support each other.

- I think we're missing a lot of potential memories, stuff we'd look back on 20, 30, 40 years, be able to tell our friends about but we have to tell them about how we didn't get to play due to the virus.

I also think that sports are a getaway for a lot of teenagers and place to go, a place to be with your friends and have some fun.

- The sports restrictions that were put due to COVID really hampered my motivation.

And the fact that due to a canceled season, there's really nothing to work towards or work for.

And, you know, it just got really hard in the fact that you really couldn't really just grind with the guys that you've been with on a daily basis.

And it just really made training hard.

You know, you didn't really have anything to look forward to.

- Local youth sports stopped in November.

Governor Ned Lamont shut down both public and private sector youth sports for two months beginning November 23rd.

That ruling shows that ultimately state government has the power to intervene against potential COVID-19 transmission through sports.

Joining me now, the state's top health administrator, Department of Public Health Commissioner, Deidre Gifford.

Welcome to Cutline commissioner.

Thank you for joining us.

- Thank you very much for having me.

- I looked at the state website with all the recommendations on sports and the pandemic, and there you say that the rules don't mean that organized sports should stop.

You stress the importance of physical activity.

So what is the task ahead of you in terms of keeping kids healthy at this time but also safe from COVID?

- Well, you bring up a really good point, which is that all of our guidance from the governor and from the Department of Public Health has been aimed at balancing the really important needs of our children and youth to have physical exercise during this pandemic and balance that against the risk of transmission and impacts on school closures of organized sports.

So we've been working with the Athletic Association and our private sports leagues to try to thread that needle successfully.

- In my reporting that I've done over the last couple of months, I've heard from the State Department of Ed commissioner that COVID-19 isn't really being spread inside school houses.

Now this comes before we have obviously this variant that's coming over from the UK and is in the United States but some may take that to mean that young people aren't passing the virus between one another.

Several parents I talked to for the special say that, "Hey, my kids are going to school during a pandemic.

Why can't they play during a pandemic?"

What do you say to these folks?

- Well, I understand.

I had a young athlete for most of my son's life as well so I appreciate the importance of sports to kids and to the community.

But there are varying risks between being in a classroom fully-masked, being physically distance from your educators and your fellow students, and engaging in active sports.

And we know that sports have varying levels of risk associated with them.

Those sports that involve what we call a forceful exhalation or vigorous aerobic exercise where there's heavy breathing, those are some of the higher risk sports, particularly when there's close contact between the athletes.

And then sports where it's an individual activity, you can remain physically distance from the other competitors.

Things like golf or tennis are much lower risk.

So in our guidance, we've differentiated between those types of sports and really asked our coaches and other adults to focus on the safer activities.

- I know recently you've been talking about the importance of getting that are really 75 and older vaccinated immediately, as we look forward to COVID-19 vaccination Phase 1b.

So does any of this have to do with kids not necessarily being vaccinated yet, obviously, the general population not being vaccinated yet?

Is that a concern that they could still infect their loved ones?

- So it wasn't necessarily the case that we could identify transmission happening within the sports although that did happen in some cases.

But we had a lot of children being exposed to an infected child during an athletic activity or a coach being exposed and then needing to quarantine, have students be out of school for prolonged period of time because of the need to quarantine after an exposure.

So that was a very big impact that we witnessed in the fall.

It was a significant burden for local health departments doing the contact tracing.

In addition to what you're talking about which is that some children may spread and young adults may spread the infection to older adults in the community, even though they are asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms.

- The activities in the higher risk category that you just mentioned earlier include wrestling and high school football.

They haven't really been played out at least in the venue of girls and boys high school sports.

Is there any way those activities can continue despite their designation?

- Well, we will be working with the athletic association to continue our recommendations on moderate versus higher risk versus lower risk sports.

I think given where we are in the pandemic, higher risk sports are still not going to be advisable.

And then we're gonna be working with the coaches and athletes around for the moderate risk sports, having the competitors wear masks both when they're training and when they're competing.

We've had some experience now with athletes wearing masks during competition.

And the experience so far has been at the masks are tolerated.

In some sports like swimming, it's obviously not a possibility, but in most of our moderate risk and lower risk sports it is and so we'll be working with the athletes and coaches to put that in place.

- The association we're talking about is the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference.

And when we're talking about high risk and mitigation and things like that, they had thought that at least in terms of football and a couple other the high risk sports, they thought that maybe they could mitigate the risk or something like that.

Do you agree with that or what's the discrepancy there with maybe trying to get on the same page in terms of the risk level of a sport like high school football?

- Yeah, it's been difficult and we certainly understand the importance of those sports for the student athletes and the importance to their communities.

But there are some sports, and it's really just the nature of the play, it is not a value judgment about the sport and it's not meant to elevate or lower one sport above or below another.

It's really just because of the nature of the game and the nature of this particular virus and the way it's transmitted that for wrestling, for example, it's just not likely possible that we can sufficiently mitigate the higher risk of spread.

And we just don't want the students and the other athletes that are involved to be exposed to that risk.

So, you know, we've asked in those cases that those sports be delayed until after the peak of the pandemic.

And we're grateful for the understanding and the cooperation that we've had from CIAC and others.

- I know when we're talking about the CIAC, it sounds like there's been a lot of talk back and forth between the two of you guys lately and it sounds like you're trying to work on a solution for the future.

Could this have been handled a little bit better early on?

Is this a reciprocity we have now, kind of a product of that?

- The pandemic for all of us has been a series of new experiences to use somewhat of a euphemism.

And so there was a lot going on in the fall and understanding how sports would fit into that picture took a little bit of process to work through.

And as you point out now, we've got some experience and we've got the lines of communication established so things are going along well.

- And I understand part of the frustration there was that for a while, the private sector sports continued until your local Departments of Public Health stepped in.

So why do you think it took so long to get an alignment to make sure that some of these independent leagues didn't have to continue on?

- Yeah, that was a another, you know, I think as I was saying that we're all learning throughout this pandemic and I think we've learned the importance of the alignment there.

And we sort of learned how, when we pushed on one side of the balloon, what would expand outside the other side of the balloon.

And so we had to respond to those things and that's what this process has been.

And I will again say that we do appreciate the cooperation of those athletic leagues and local health departments that have helped us to manage this process.

- Last question, I promise you here Commissioner, at this time, I gotta ask you, we were talking about mitigation earlier in winter sports.

Do you think the COVID-19 metrics support moderate risk winter sports like basketball and ice hockey?

And specifically what what's gonna tell you whether or not they can happen?

- Well, we've always said, in talking with CIAC and local health departments, we've always said that things could change depending on what the metrics look like.

We're watching our case numbers and test positivity really closely right now because we're all like the rest of the country, expecting a post-holiday bump in cases in positivity.

So we put out guidance and there's always a caveat with the guidance that things may change if conditions merit and the governor has been pretty clear about that.

And he hasn't hesitated to adjust the recommendations when the condition is warranted.

Public health comes first and I know our student athletes and our coaches understand that.

And again, we're gonna continue to try to thread that needle between the really significant and important value of athletics and sports for our kids, and the need to protect the public health for the students, their school communities, and their wider communities at large.

- An incredible task to have to be a Department of Public Health Commissioner in the middle of a pandemic.

Thank you so much for taking some time out of your busy schedule to help us out here.

We appreciate it, Commissioner Gifford.

- You're very welcome.

Thank you for having me on.

- One of the following students you're about to meet is making eight meals a day to bulk up.

Another, Zooms to develop chemistry with her new teammates.

And then there's the seven foot one phenom with 17 scholarship offers in his pocket who can't ball at home because he keeps breaking all the hoops.

These are the lives of three Connecticut teens trying to do what they can to better their collegiate prospects during the pandemic when high school competition is hard to find.

You're about to meet three teenagers with pretty unique stories on staying fresh in a pandemic.

For your Yamani McCollough, Donovan Clingan and Cole Feinauer, it's all about honing their skills now to later realize scholarship dreams.

(wind gushing) (Yamani exhaling) - Hearing the news on how we weren't even gonna be able to finish or get the ring that we've been working for the whole season, was very heartbreaking to me.

I felt like it was a kind of a waste of a year because I worked so hard to get here and now they're just gonna take it away.

(ball bouncing on court) I don't know where I would be in life or what I would be doing if I didn't play basketball.

Basketball definitely defines me.

(upbeat music) I had to choose to put myself in a better situation so I ended up transferring out of Notre Dame Fairfield and ending up in Putnam Science just for a better basketball opportunity just because of the whole pandemic going on.

I chose to go to this school because it will give me that extra year if I needed it in-between college and high school.

So if I didn't need to do one more year for a better opportunity, I would be able to do that.

Most colleges are looking for, I wouldn't say like seniors, but they're looking for what fits best into their program.

So I definitely think that doing an extra year would give them the better opportunity to see me play because they're recruiting me off of practice right now.

So you can't really do as much as practice than you do in the games.

I definitely am grateful of the opportunities they have given us definitely with it being a pandemic going on.

So I am grateful and I do appreciate that I still get to work out and play and even play against people not only alone.

In the winter, I would prefer to be in the gym, but you know, I would try here and there to come outside and maybe like, just do some jumping jacks and just like get that breath of crisp winter air and see how that feels.

But I definitely work out more in the gym in the winter and it has been pretty hard right now because they're not really letting anyone into gyms or into closed spaces but whenever I do get the chance, I jump up and go.

And as a person, I have definitely appreciated and been grateful for the smaller things in life, not only basketball, but family and friends.

You're not gonna always have everything and some of that can be taken away from you pretty quickly and you not expecting when it could go and when it could stay.

(breathing heavily) (shovel scooping snow) (breathing heavily) (feet stomping on snow) (breathing heavily) - If I had my senior season, I would be going straight to college.

COVID it affected it.

Pretty much completely my school didn't play any football.

We had some practices but we never really got film that I needed.

I needed a game film and I just didn't get that.

(breathing heavily) I definitely don't think the prep year would be a thing if COVID didn't happen.

There was a impulse decision, I just had to do it and I have a mindset now, it's perhaps cool.

I'd say the passing of my mom completely changed the perspective of my life.

She was my biggest supporter and she went to all my games and every rep I take, I do think about her.

I always think, Oh, I can't work any harder than she did cause she fought for three and a half years.

So I'm always like I gotta push myself to the limits.

And it helps me on and off the field, especially in the classroom.

(wrapper crinkling) Warm up.

Going into quarantine, I was a skimpy, like 250 pounds, I guess you can't call that skimpy, but I was thin.

Post-quarantine about four or five months later, I was nearly 290 pounds, almost like 295 pounds.

I try and get in like six to seven meals a day.

In my mind, I wake up, I'm like, what am I gonna eat?

Like, what am I gonna eat?

I'm sitting on the couch, I gotta get up and eat.

I got to get up and cook.

Of course the studying part from home, it helps a lot.

I get a lot of extra time.

I mean, I can do my stuff on my own time.

I'd say it helped me mature a lot cause I have to do a lot of things on my own, no one's watching me, no teachers are watching over me telling me what to do.

And it helped me just develop a work ethic that sticks.

(breathing heavily) I feel like I really have to start playing football.

We haven't played football in about a year now, in a year or so.

I haven't hit anyone seriously in a year.

The practices we had this quarantine, this COVID, we just hit pads and it wasn't a human contact to contact.

I just wanna get myself out there and show them what I got.

I think I got the size.

Especially next year, if I get an extra year of experience, it'll mean everything.

I'll be bigger, stronger, faster, everything.

(ambient music) (ball bouncing on court) (ring squeaking) (ball bouncing on court) (panting) (ring squeaking) - At the beginning of the pandemic, I was almost seven foot.

Now I'm 7.1 little less but you know, I was growing all the time.

(ball bouncing on court) Almost three years ago, I lost my mom, cancer.

It's been a rough three years I'll tell you that for sure, but I'm doing, just trying to do what she loved which is basketball and just trying to make her proud.

During this pandemic, it's been hard to like not see my friends.

I'm pretty social and I like to be around people and you know, hang out and talk and be able to go out on weekends and stuff.

I mean, I never, since I was a little kid I never would just sit in my house all day I'd always be outside or going out doing something.

(panting) I mean like normal life if you're playing basketball six days a week, you could sneak in crap food and eat that here and there.

When now, I don't play as much so you gotta be careful what you're eating.

So I feel like I need to get in shape a little bit.

Oh, it hurts.

Damn.

When I was 17, the D-1 offers, again, interests from like 10 to 15 more schools.

Don't know when I'm going to make my decision, I have no idea.

Like not really looking into that right now.

I'm waiting a little longer.

I just wanna go where I know I'll get better and where hopefully make it to pro.

- We've been checking in with teenagers from across the state to see how they're coping with the strain of COVID-19 on their lives as athletes.

Now, we're gonna look at it from a different perspective.

I've got two parents of high school football players here that'll talk with us about what they've been going through with their children.

They are Heather Stannard and Rahsaan Yearwood.

- I'll start with Heather.

You've got Lucas and Mason who respectively are a senior and a freshman at Torrington High and you were down with them playing during a pandemic, why?

- Because that's their life.

They absolutely love football and for them to have it kind of taken away from them, it was a big ordeal.

Especially since my senior, he was supposed to be the starting quarterback for this year and that was basically taken away from him and we're hoping for a spring season.

- I wanna hear more about how the children are coping after that you can't imagine a kid losing their senior year as quarterback.

That's something that everybody thinks about, that's in that position and it's a great story but I wanna go to Rahsaan real quickly just to say that you have two children that are football players in high school right now, Hasani and Emeka who play at Cromwell High.

You were really hoping Hasani got to play out his final season, but he didn't.

What would have it meant to you to see him play?

- Yeah, I mean, as someone that had the fortune to play football in both high school and college, I could appreciate all the things that football has to offer it's student athletes and so for me, knowing that he wasn't gonna play in college, it would have just been great to watch him go out on a high note.

Probably I was expecting big things after a downward season last year.

And then you add the fact that I would have been able to see much like Heather, the two siblings play together with a freshmen and senior playing together.

You know, it's really disappointing that they weren't able to play and like her, I fully supported them playing but I understand why they didn't.

- Back in March, then May, and then again in September, the CIAC made tough calls to end certain activities because of COVID-19.

Last one had to do with football and it was controversial because it took so long for everything to shake out as the CIAC and the State Department of Public Health had a back and forth for a while over the risk level of sports traditionally played in the fall.

That's how I found you both earlier this year.

I'll following along on Facebook, sorta stuck in limbo as I had mentioned.

Rahsaan, you just told me a little bit about how you were doing throughout that process, but I just wanna check in mentally with where you were at throughout that process as you're watching your children kind of deal with this, will we, or won't we?

- Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the kids unfortunately had a lot of practice last spring with this kind of will we or won't we, what are we gonna do, what are we not gonna.

Had a kid who graduated from high school last year, we gonna have graduation, we're not gonna have a graduation.

So I think unfortunately, by the time we got to the fall, they were better prepared to deal with the ambiguity.

It doesn't make it any less frustrating.

You know, clearly they're very disappointed, but unfortunately, because we had this back and forth, even before this and now dealing with, are we in school this week, are we hybrid, are we distance?

They've kind of normed the process of not knowing what tomorrow holds, which is both promising and scary at the same time.

- Heather, while this was all being sorted out, and you're kind of in that limbo phase, you made some choices as a family to make sure that your kid would be able to play.

You canceled vacation, didn't travel so you wouldn't get sick, all in an effort to stay ready for sports.

In the end, it didn't matter because football got postponed but how did that all leave you feeling?

- It was very frustrating.

We went day-to-day and it was very rocky.

I mean, we did end up, my oldest did end up doing the independently for a short amount of time, but that was even cut short, just so that way that you can get onto the fields because we didn't know what it was gonna be like.

- And one thing that we talked about when I interviewed you back for a story in September around that period, I know you mentioned being worried about your kids, maybe getting into trouble as children often do at that age, if they didn't have that sort of structure in their life.

What was it like for them not to have that season and those kinds of things you worry about as a parent?

Were those things magnified, I guess?

- You know, depression has set in.

You know, because they're so used to being going to school, playing football, you know, and the coach was great, like interacting with the boys and making sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

But as a parent, like you're sitting here and you just wanna make things better and just have them go out onto the field and play with their teammates, rather than sitting home.

We're a family that were always on the go.

Like sports is a huge thing.

They go to school, they go to sport, you know, we look forward to the games every week and that was definitely cut short.

- Heather, I wanna dig a little deeper because in case any parents are following along, and it's very important to have this perspective, I want them to kind of see how these symptoms, maybe of depression manifest themselves or something like that.

What is it that looks a little bit different with your kids now that they don't have football in their life?

What are the kinds of things that they're doing?

- Really, nothing.

Like sitting in their room playing Xbox all the time - Rahsaan, what role do sports play in your kid's life?

- Yes, I mean, football is something that they've done from six years old on, something, you know, obviously I said, I've done it, their grandfather did it, their uncles and their cousins did it.

It's a big part of our experience as young men, some through college, often through high school.

And for me, what football has done and what would they get from it besides the thrill of the sport and everything else, is the discipline to playing football.

There's an ethic that you have to invest in yourself as an athlete to get bigger and stronger.

The teamwork, the camaraderie, dealing with folks from diverse communities and backgrounds, all of those things you get when you're on a team of 50, 30, 60 kids, that you just don't get when you take that away.

And so it's been frustrating to watch them lose out not only on the game, but lose out on the camaraderie and the friendship.

- A lot of upheaval in all of our daily lives in 2020.

I appreciate hearing how each of you are rolling with it.

Heather, Rahsaan, thank you for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- Thank you.

- A number of public high school sports have been abandoned during the pandemic, like high school football and lacrosse.

At one point, members of the local sports community, stepped up to try and get kids a game to play in.

They formed independently, separate from public high school sports organizations, like the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference.

The Department of Public Health never got behind tackle football, for example.

And when it seemed like independent leagues might play anyway, not playing under the CIAC supervision, the CIAC advised against it.

It told member schools they could face liability by merely loaning equipment to play.

Joining me, two organizers of independent sports programs, one Casey Metz of a football team in the Old Lyme area, another Christian Vick who ran a lacrosse league that stepped in to give girls lacrosse players a shot at competition last summer.

Independent endeavors weren't really supported by the state, but you went ahead with it for a little while.

Casey, your team's participation in the Connecticut High School Independent Football League, was super controversial, and I promise we'll get to that in a little bit.

But before we go down that road, I really want to know why you got involved in the league in the first place and what your role was.

- So I am a mom of two football players, and they wanted a place to play when they found out that the CIAC was not gonna allow them to play through their high school.

So I said I would do what I could as a mom, as a parent, to get them on a team to play.

And that meant creating our own team.

So that's what we did.

And I found your organization on Facebook and I asked them if we could join their league and Mark Sims said yes, all you need to do is just form your team.

So that's what we did with the parents and the players.

- I mentioned earlier how the CIAC advise schools against supporting independent leagues and that resulted in some pushback for you guys and at least some temporary sanctions, but Valley Regional and Lyme-Old Lyme High School are members of the CIAC and they have a co-op football team coached by Tim King.

He coaches your son, Kyle.

And as I understand it, as you're planning together to maybe play in the independent league, you asked the coach for some advice or you had some kind of conversation with him.

And I'll let you tell your version of the events but what resulted was King being asked to resign from his post initially at least.

What happened from your perspective?

- I think the school administrators thought he had a bigger role in the team and forming the independent team than he did.

And I was able to speak out and say that he had no involvement.

He didn't help form the team.

You know, we did it all ourselves, the parents.

we got the equipment, we got the insurance, we got the uniforms, we got the field to practice on because we weren't allowed to play at the high school field.

And Tim just really wasn't involved.

We purposely didn't involve him because we knew like what could happen if he was involved.

So I didn't need to go to him for anything, but he is still the boys' coach and he will support them.

So he's going to wanna see them play as a person in the stands, you know, as a parent, as a proud coach.

So that's really the only involvement he had.

- And thank you for clearing that up for us.

I reached out to coach King for his story and he said he couldn't talk.

We also hit up Valley Regional High for comment, where King works, but haven't heard back.

The good news for King is that the quest for him to resign, was the request for him to resign was rescinded and he'll stay on as Valley's coach.

All of this Casey though, for one game.

Tell me what transpired with the CHSIFL.

- So we had a good two weeks of practice on our farm, on the field that we had available to us and then we did get to play a game, which was awesome.

We won.

So we're undefeated and the boys, they loved it.

They were able to play real football, you know, tackle football.

They were able to get some film for the seniors that needed it, you know, that wanna play next year.

And that's really what it was about.

It was to get them playing and get them some film.

And we accomplished that, yeah.

- I wanna hear more about the farm, Casey.

Tell me more about other logistical challenges the league faced.

I'm asking because the recommendations about liability from the CIAC made it a little harder to secure equipment.

And then I understand there were issues with finding people to officiate, fields to play, and that's where Casey, the farm comes in.

Someone let y'all of farms?

- Yeah.

Yeah, so we did.

We played on a farm.

We had a great opportunity arose with one of our parents found that a farm in Old Lyme, and they said, "Listen, we have all this space.

You're welcome to come use it in practice."

So we did, and we had lines painted on it for the players and that's where we practiced.

And it wasn't just us, some of the other teams in the league had to come up with some unique places to play.

One of the teams practiced at Quassy Amusement Park.

So everyone was kinda coming up with their own ways to get these kids playing, and we did.

- Well, thank you for sharing that.

I appreciate it.

With Quassy and farm, that's really interesting.

I've held back Christian Vick a bit because I wanted to own in a bit with him here.

Vick runs the James Vick Foundation, a nonprofit that quickly put together a girls lacrosse dream league that featured 10 teams, players who at the time had just lost out on a spring high school sports season.

How did your foundation, Christian, rise up to meet these students?

- You know, I think that it really started with the athletes themselves.

You know, they became advocates when the CIAC unfortunately had to cancel the season.

And I kind of just rode the wave, like a surfer riding a tsunami.

This was the athletes and the parents, and I would be remiss if I didn't give credit to the CIAC who allowed coaches, the actual high school coaches, to coach the teams that were representing the different towns.

We were able to use the same high schools in most cases that the girls play on.

It was a great experience in that it wasn't a CIAC, it wasn't normal but it was normal enough for the girls to get an experience that was potentially lost to them.

And for me, what really touched me more than anything, was seeing the seniors.

Because if we don't pull this off, these young women are going to college and they won't have a senior year.

They won't be time to do a do over in the fall.

- Did you face any logistical issues?

Did you have problems with trying to secure fields, coaches, officials?

- Yeah, I essentially had to turn into an advocate myself, you know, because every single municipality, we had to communicate with, we had to work with.

And I think we didn't necessarily receive pushback, we just received legitimate concerns.

Towns wanted us to submit a COVID-19 protocol mitigation plan.

They wanted certain assurances and they wanted to stay in contact.

So I spent a lot of time talking to first selectmen, parks and recs departments, public works, and public health departments for the different municipalities.

So I actually have to give credit to Governor Ned Lamont because we submitted a proposal to his office doing intermediary early in the summer.

And shortly after that, he actually moved up the date to reopen sports.

So while he has been criticized and scrutinized, and while the CIAC has as well, from the James Vick Foundation's perspective, they kind of grease these kids for us.

- And Christian, from what I understand, you seem to be pretty proud of the COVID-19 testing protocol that you had for the league.

You don't see that a lot in terms of youth sports leagues or something like that.

So could you get into the COVID-19 testing protocol, and what you might've done to try to get kids from catching the virus?

- This was an unprecedented situation in terms of trying to administrate youth sports.

So the first thing that we wanted to do beyond anything was establish a baseline.

We didn't know this for sure then, but we know now that COVID-19 can stay in your system for months.

So by doing an initial test, just to see where everybody is, we successfully created a baseline.

- Do you have any more plans to expand testing if you have to do something like this again or just in your normal programs that you offer?

- Yeah, so after the Dream League, we did a lot of programming.

We did a big soccer tournament.

We did a fall lacrosse series tournament.

We started a free lacrosse club, Go Vipers!

(Frankie laughing) And we did a city soccer program.

And that required us to be as careful as we were during the Dream League.

So for me, I'm banking on the CIAC pulling it off and giving the girls their season and a return to normalcy.

But if they don't, what we've been doing is actually looking more into the testing method that was used by the NBA and developed by Yale University.

That can be done on the spot, under the mouth, really quickly.

We gonna have to have a testing method that's onsite and somewhat relatively painless in order for us to support what most likely would be a program that's three or four times the size of the original Dream League.

- I'm gonna bring Casey back in here.

It's been a while since I talked to you Casey so hopefully I didn't put you to sleep here but (Casey laughing) I wanna talk about any potential COVID-19 protocols that you might've had at least in the league because in this day and age, there has to be some kind of a COVID-19 mitigation strategy.

So what were you all able to do in the Old Lyme area there to try to keep the kids from contracting the virus?

- So the boys all had to wear long sleeve shirts under their uniform.

They had to wear the binky style mouth guards.

They had to wear bottom face shield on their helmet which we also had to purchase ourselves.

And they all obviously had their own water bottles, no one could share water bottles.

They maintained six feet apart on the sidelines.

They did not have before or after game huddles.

So we followed all of those procedures and the lead was successful when it came to COVID and having any issues.

- You mentioned earlier that it might've been able to at least you guys only played one game, but it might've been able to get some tape for some kids, maybe some seniors.

Your son's a senior, so what are the benefits of the league in your eyes?

What are some of the things that your team was able to maybe accomplish because of the fact that you were able to get a game, Casey?

- I think it was really, the film was important to a lot of the kids, but I think it was just really good for all the players, you know, mental and emotional wellbeing.

These kids had had so many ups and downs with the CIAC saying there'd be a season, not having a season and they kinda got like strung along.

And I know for my younger son, it was hard for him.

He's a sophomore and he wanted one more season with his older brother.

So he took it really hard too.

- Christian, what can you tell me about some of the positive consequences of having a season for the girls?

- We only thought we were gonna have six teams and then it ballooned to 10.

- And You got 10.

- Yeah, so just certain highlights for me were the first game.

Monroe versus Guilford in Guilford.

You have some of the best lacrosse players in the country on both teams playing a night game that they didn't think was going to happen.

And when I walked into that stadium and I saw the parents' faces and I saw the girls faces and I saw just how happy everybody was to be there, that's when I felt like our mission had done its job.

- It was worth it for you guys - Because that's what it's all about.

It's about mental health not just for the kids, but for the parents.

I would walk up and down the sidelines cause I'm somewhat enthusiastic leader.

You know what I mean?

I lead from my feet not my seat, and the parents would stop me and say thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't have to watch CNN.

I don't have to hear gloom and doom.

I can just come out here, sit in a lawn chair and watch my girl play.

That repeated itself like 60 times over the summer.

And that to me was everything.

- And Casey, it felt like you really felt him when he was talking about the mental health aspect I saw you shaking your head.

Tell me what you're thinking?

- It is.

It's so, so true.

Like, you know, my kids and the other players had gotten into such a slump when it was taken away from them.

And then when we said we were gonna do this independent league, it was like, you know, they were, it was a whole new awakening for them.

They were like this is gonna happen.

We're gonna play again.

We're gonna put pads on.

We're gonna put helmets on, and we're gonna hit someone.

And that's, you know, it meant a lot.

- I don't wanna scare you Christian, but thinking about this because I know you had to go from having six teams to 10 and then there was some interest in the other programs that you had but specifically, I wanna go quick here.

This COVID-19 vaccine, we may not all have the vaccine until maybe May or June.

So at that point, girls high school lacrosse, may have had an interruption in its season, something like that.

I don't wanna scare you, but are you having any kind of preparation to try to do this again in the spring season?

- Yeah, so what we're doing is we're hoping for the best and preparing for the worst, as Morgan Freeman said in the movie Deep Impact.

So essentially, we are moving forward under the assumption that the CIAC is gonna have plenty of time to mitigate this problem, that the girls are gonna get their chance to return to normalcy, and that the parents are gonna get to experience that as well, that there's gonna be no need for a Dream League, at all.

However, if something happens, if the vaccine's not mitigating or it's not getting to enough people, or the CIAC again feels that there's just too much liability to put the girls in danger, I wanted to send this message to every lacrosse player in the State of Connecticut, from Fairfield County to Hartford County, out towards Ridgefield up the shoreline towards Rhode Island, help will be on the way.

- I'm gonna end it there.

Thank you very much for that, Christian.

We've been able to share a ton of perspective in this show from the people most impacted by the COVID-19 related sports shutdown.

On social media I asked our followers with students who play sports to tell us how their children were doing.

Steve Holmes' 16 year old daughter is a runner.

He tells me that he and his wife see athletics as integral to their child's education.

That on the track, she can learn the value of leadership and perseverance.

For a while, there was school, but no sports.

So it's almost like Holmes' daughter was losing half of her education.

He says, "There's this sense I get that some people see the cancellation of sports as something minor and inconvenience of sorts."

"It's hard to know how to talk about it without soliciting criticism from those that feel sports are superfluous and should be eliminated during COVID."

Holmes craves creativity to make sports work in a pandemic.

Melissa Hart is the mother of Garrett Hart, an 18 year old from Wethersfield.

Garrett plays Challenger Division sports.

He's got down syndrome.

She says he doesn't have friends.

He hasn't been invited to a birthday party since he was in second grade, but sports allowed Garrett a social life.

During the pandemic, he's lost baseball, basketball, and floor hockey.

After baseball was canceled last summer, Melissa Hart noticed Garrett was not doing well.

She says, "You could tell he was lonely and depressed."

"He would go sit in the dark on the bathroom floor and just listen to music and twirl his shirt."

And if you or a loved one are going through something similar, state officials encourage you to call 211 for help.

After all, a big reason why they want kids in school and believe it or not actually playing sports, is a social-emotional benefits these things provide.

The COVID-19 vaccine offers a lot of hope.

For student athletes, it's hope that they'll get back to doing what they love.

This is Cutline: Playing with COVID.

For Connecticut Public, I'm Frankie Graziano.

Thanks for tuning in.

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