As some states and communities return to youth sports during the COVID-19 pandemic, many parents are trying to navigate this new experience on their own. Project Play is here to help. While some questions are best answered by public health experts based on local conditions, there are guidelines and best practices that are very useful. We will periodically answer youth sports parents’ questions in this Project Play Parent Mailbag. Got a question? Submit it in the space on the right side of this page or email jon.solomon@aspeninstitute.org.
My son’s soccer team requires us to sign a COVID-19 waiver for him to play this fall. Should we sign it?
Heather Terry
That’s a personal decision for families. In many cases, electing to not sign a waiver will mean your child won’t be allowed to play on a team or in a league. Many youth sports organizations view waivers as a way to prevent legal recourse in case your child or anyone else contracts COVID-19, although there’s debate over how effective and enforceable these waivers may be if challenged in court.
We tackled the question of waivers in this past story and at our Return to Play webinar. Keep in mind, if a youth sports organization or school district gets sued, establishing that a person contracted the virus at the sports event will be difficult, said Steven Bank, UCLA school of law professor. Theoretically, the person could have become infected anywhere in community.
“There may be a lot of correlation, but it will be challenging to establish the sports event is the cause,” Bank said. “On the other side, if you get to a jury and (the sports organization) didn’t follow the customary precautions identified by (the organization’s) sanctioning body or whatever is considered the standard of care, then that’s going to look bad that (the organization) didn’t take the necessary steps.”
Waiver applicability varies by state laws. In the past, waivers have not always held up in court. Bank said the closest examples of legal precedent in liability issues involving infections happened with the spread of MRSA at facilities.
“In those cases, courts were most likely to impose a duty of liability when the facility owners or the sponsor of the activity knew or should have known there was an infection,” Bank said. “If we translate it to COVID-19, (sports organizations) need to have protocols in place and (organizations) need to be particularly concerned about people who come in with any known conditions and who have issues that start when they’re at your facility.”
The real intent for waivers is to try to eliminate nuisance claims from someone who wants to roll the dice on a case, said Lori Crispo, area president for RPS Bollinger Sports & Leisure, which is the insurance administrator for US Lacrosse. “The larger claims may not be covered by waivers,” she said.
Our best advice to parents on whether to sign: Do your homework first about your child’s sports program. Any waiver you sign should be accompanied by documentation of the measures the program will take to mitigate the risk of infection. Project Play has a list of eight questions that parents can ask themselves and their sports provider about returning to play.
Think of the waiver request as a two-way street. It shouldn’t simply be a demand by organizations. It needs to be a conversation, with documented evidence, that the organization will apply and enforce best practices, so parents feel comfortable if they elect to sign.
Has any state developed a return to sport form for COVID-19? What is the common practice for documentation in secondary athletics?
Lori Moss
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) created an athlete-coach monitoring form template to keep track of symptoms. The form can be found here in Appendix II at the bottom of its return to play document.
The NFHS medical advisory committee is recommending state associations not require students to have a physical before participating in sports this year. The NFHS says many primary care clinics are backed up and offices aren’t doing their typical preparticipation physical evaluations (PPE). The PPE is required for high school sports participation in every state and the District of Columbia, with a variation in the required interval times between exams, ranging from annually to every three years. The NFHS recommends state associations handle PPEs this way:
Follow the laws for your state. Discuss with state health department and state medical associations prior to making a final decision how best to approach this issue. Some states may not be able to make changes without approval of their state legislature.
If needed, allow a one-year extension to any student who has a PPE that expires before or during the 2020-21 academic year.
Inform parents and guardians that extending the duration between PPEs is a deviation from standard of care, but when there isn’t evidence to the contrary, the change in practice would permit the greatest overall health benefit from the allocation of scarce medical resources.
Many medical experts stress that youth should still try obtain their physical during the pandemic. The physical allows families to address any health issues that may have occurred over the past year and ask questions about exposure to COVID-19 and how to stay safe.
Source: NFHS. Click to enlarge.
One topic that I haven’t heard much about is how much politics may be playing into the return-to-play decisions for kids. Is there any research showing that our political divide is happening in our sports decisions too?
Tom Phelps
We are a very divided country, and yes, it is showing in sports.
For instance, high school football decisions are often breaking down by party lines based on who’s the state governor, according to Outkick. Twenty-five out of the 26 states with a Republican governor are planning to play high school football this fall. (Maryland is the lone outlier.) In states with a Democratic governor, 14 out of the 22 won’t play football this fall – and a 15th state (Pennsylvania) has a governor has recommended against the sport. Three states have not announced intentions. Some of the decisions in states led by Republican governors could still change.
In Pennsylvania, Republican state lawmakers are introducing legislation that would give school districts the power to decide whether fall sports and activities can go on, including whether spectators are allowed. This comes after Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, recommended that youth and high school sports not resume until January in an effort to prevent gatherings that would spread the virus.
Companion Republican-led legislation would give parents more power to let their children repeat a year of schooling if they feel their child didn’t get the education they needed or missed out on a year of athletics, according to the Associated Press. So, if a high schooler missed a season of his or her sport – and a chance to make their case for a college scholarship – the legislation would allow the child to repeat a year.
The divide in sports politically isn’t surprising. A new survey from Pew Research shows that six in 10 Americans say the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is rising primarily because there are more new infections, not just because more people are being tested compared with previous months. But 68% of self-described conservative Republicans say the primary reason for the rise is that more people are being tested, whereas 90% of self-described liberal Democrats say the increase is mainly due to more new infections.
The U.S. has carried out more than 69 million COVID-19 tests as of Aug. 13 – 9% of which came back positive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which notes that some people may have been tested more than once. An analysis by The New York Times in July found that the rise in the number of tests has not been enough to account for an even bigger increase in COVID-19 cases.
We will periodically answer youth sports parents’ questions in this Project Play Parent Mailbag. Got a question? Submit it in the form in this page’s sidebar or email jon.solomon@aspeninstitute.org.
