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Earlier this month, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer urged schools and clubs to abandon their youth sporting events while the state another wave in Covid cases.
The next day, hundreds of children, parents and coaches gathered at the Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo for the annual Michigan Youth Wrestling Association championships, where maskless competitors faced off, pitched and stared. for three days of competition.
Those involved in youth wrestling say they could not have planned to cancel the multitude of competitions that mark the end of the state wrestling season. But health experts warn that events like this have helped drive a wave of infections that has left hospitals once again at a breaking point.
Rick Sadler, an assistant professor in the public health department at Michigan State University, said: “Whitmer filed a petition for people to give up youth sports and people not take it seriously. People think that they are children and do not transmit it, but the strain B.1.1.7 [which is now dominant in the US] is a completely different ball game.
“We are close to the worst peak Michigan he has never had it, but this time it is the young people who populate our emergency services. “
The battle for youth sport is just one aspect of a broader push by politicians and health officials to encourage Americans to remain cautious, even as vaccine implementation in the United States continues to fast pace. Public health experts are concerned that the success of the vaccination program has made people overconfident about their chances of avoiding the virus, which has led to a sudden rise in certain parts of the country.
Michigan has been at the center of the latest U.S. wave, with an average of seven days of new cases recently approaching its all-time high of about 8,000 a day. according to data of Johns Hopkins University. There are about now 4,000 people in the hospital with the disease statewide, more than at any time during the pandemic. Deaths have also begun to rise.
Health officials have blamed the rise on several factors, but the state’s competitive youth sports scene has taken a prominent place.
The state health department has identified at least 291 clusters associated with youth sports since January, with 1,091 cases. Indoor sports seem to cause the biggest problems, as 106 groups come from basketball, 62 from wrestling and 51 from ice hockey.
The fight against risk is considered especially high: the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends not wearing masks during sports because of the risk that competitors may suffocate them.
In December, a side wrestling tournament in Florida was the source of one Covid-19 outbreak responsible for at least 79 cases and one death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Despite all this, recent competitions have had a lot of attendance, participants say. Parents and coaches said they were reassured by the stringent testing requirements that require any fighter test to be negative for Covid within 72 hours of the competition.
Ice hockey has been associated with 51 Covid cases in Michigan since January, according to the state health department © Adam Glanzman / The Washington Post via Getty Images
“We haven’t had anyone who has tested positive or been exposed,” said Pete Israel, a Salem High School wrestling coach. “If all these guys are in such close contact and they don’t get it, is it really a problem?”
Israel’s comments reflect the views of many of those involved in youth sports across the country.
A recent survey by Aspen Institute and Utah State University found that while 66% of high school students said they were concerned that they could catch or transmit Covid through sports participation, 84% said they had at least the same interest in playing as before. pandemic.
“In the United States, the youth club sports scene came back pretty quickly, a year ago in many places,” said Jon Solomon, editorial director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports and Society Program.
Unlike much of Europe, youth sports play an important role in the development of professional talent in the United States, where athletes are often captured from a young age by professional teams.
“It’s a highly commercialized industry – people will travel all over the country to go to the next big event where college explorers will be able to see them,” Solomon said. “There are families who will spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to get their children to do college sports.”
Some schools have allowed athletes to remain in e-learning to minimize the risk of picking up Covid and not being able to compete. Others make their teams eat separately from other students.
And many parents and coaches are angry at the suggestion that the virus is spreading through competitions. They suggest that social events associated with team sports could play a larger role.
“I don’t know of any cases where Covid came from playing sports,” said Holly Locke, manager of a Canton Soccer Club office in Canton, Michigan, and father of two high school athletes. “Either he came from parents where they hired a friend or they got him out of school and they’re just athletes.”
Locke added, “We went to Florida on my son’s spring break with other athletes from the school. A good number of children hired Covid down there: my son stayed apart from the parties, but many of the children were together and got sick. ”
Despite this, Locke says she remains committed to the continuity of her children on their football and basketball teams.
“I haven’t thought for a minute if it’s worth it,” he said. “This was all my son had been wanting for three years in high school: playing football and basketball for the last year.
“I missed school, I missed coming home; missing sports would also have put the key to the coffin.”
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