Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
The first domino fell on New Mexico’s fall high school sports season Wednesday, and the rest fell Thursday.
The New Mexico Activities Association announced Wednesday the fall season's first prep sports events scheduled for Saturday were canceled because Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham hadn't signed off on them.
The next day, citing a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases statewide, Lujan Grisham said she wouldn't update the state's public health order regarding high-school sports, thus effectively delaying all fall games until at least early 2021.
One day after her announcement, New Mexico saw its worst day since the pandemic began, with 488 confirmed cases of coronavirus. The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state also have increased sharply.
The news of sports delays also was greeted by disappointment and anger on social media. Hundreds of people, protesting the decision, gathered in Santa Fe on Friday.
The initial cancellations affected home volleyball season-openers at Logan and San Jon and Tucumcari road game at Pecos. A Tucumcari girls and boys cross-country meet scheduled at Mora also was canceled.
The delays announced Thursday would push the start of volleyball season to February, about the time the rescheduled football season would begin.
“This is an extremely sad day for students across New Mexico,” NMAA Executive Director Sally Marquez said Thursday in the wake of the governor’s announcement.
Lujan Grisham said she couldn't allow those sports events to proceed because travel required with them made the risk of spreading COVID-19 too high. Health officials have long reported a strong correlation with travel and coronavirus spread.
“It's a huge disappointment,” she said. “We cannot afford these additional health risks.”
The governor and other state health officials long have said during the pandemic the risks of COVID-19 weren’t high for teenagers, but they didn’t want student-athletics to contract the virus and spread it to teachers, staff and relatives who were more vulnerable.
She said she also delayed sports to ensure that more students could return in public school classrooms in the coming weeks instead of learning remotely.
Lujan Grisham said all sports teams would be allowed to continue workouts in 9-to-1 player-to-coach ratios if masks were worn.
San Jon volleyball coach Jaree Elliott said she broke the news to her team via Zoom videoconference Thursday afternoon.
“It was hard to watch their faces fall and see my seniors’ tears,” she said Friday. “It was horrible.”
Elliott said she disagrees with the governor’s decision.
“When you take athletics away, it wrecks some of them,” she said. “It’s tremendously sad, and it’s going to be years before we see the fallout of these decisions that are happening now. It’s not going to be good.”
She said her team would continue to work out twice a week “so they can stay in shape, to give them something to look forward to.”
“We are disappointed but remain optimistic about getting a chance to play volleyball this year,” Logan coach Robert Young stated in a text Friday. “Need to as much as for mental and emotional well-being as we do for the physical.”
Young said his Lady Longhorns, the Class 1A champions three years running, will continue practices under out-of-season guidelines.
“They were disappointed,” Tucumcari coach Dana Benavidez said of her players Friday, “but we’re going to try to maintain the mental health and well-being of student-athletes and try to remain positive.”
Benavidez said the Lady Rattlers wouldn’t hold practices until they receive state guidelines about scrimmages.
“We’re going to wait until things progress a little more,” she said.
Tucumcari athletic director Wayne Ferguson said the NMAA would release revised schedules this week and surmised volleyball season would coincide with football season in February and March.
He said, however, the volleyball postseason may conflict with the start of girls basketball.
As for cross country, Ferguson said he’d heard talk it would be canceled, and track meets next spring instead would incorporate 3-mile cross-country races into those events.
Ferguson said during a school board meeting several weeks ago he and other athletic directors in the state anticipated a delay in fall sports. The rise in COVID-19 cases leading up to Thursday’s decision solidified that hunch.
“With the uptick in cases in the last week and a half, I was almost positive this was going to happen,” he said Friday.
“There’s a lot of mad people,” Ferguson added. “Every state around us is doing some type of sport. Their cases (of COVID-19) are rising, but they’re still doing stuff.
“It’s a sad, unprecedented day.”