When CIF Southern Section commissioner Rob Wigod stood up at a virtual press conference nearly two weeks ago and announced the coronavirus-forced changes that among other things pushed the start of the high school football season into January, there was one specific point he wanted to make.
“Our student-athletes have had enough negativity over the last few months,” he said. “They are looking for us to bring them some positive news for the future.”
That was a reminder: Whatever can be done to get everyone back on the field or court or track – a tall order anyway in the midst of a pandemic – has to be about those young people. Not about coaches, not about trophies, not even about scholarships.
It has to be about the kids, the reserves as well as the Division I prospects, and giving them the best athletic experience possible. Wigod elaborated on that in a followup conversation.
“I think our student-athletes … have had to deal with so many things that have been taken away from them,” he said. “I really wanted our message to be about what’s coming up and (what’s) for them to look forward to, and how we need to deliver for them.
“And the adults, we adults, need to be in front of that message and let them know that we can get this done and we can come through. And that’s what I really hope we begin to do now. It’s really not about what could have been done or perhaps a suggestion that wasn’t considered. It’s really now about what is in place, what we’re trying to do. Let’s come through for these student-athletes who are depending on us to do it.”
In other words, find a way to get it done. There are going to be conflicts, maybe someone who coaches both the boys and girls teams and has to choose, or competition between teams for gym time, or coaches figuring out how to share the services of a two-sport star. That sort of thing is unavoidable in the process of shoehorning three seasons of sports into winter and spring with full playoffs for each. But the more that can be done with compromise and without complaint, the better.
Most of the attention paid to high school sports goes to the elite athletes, and one of their first-world problems became front of mind when the football season was moved back to January. All of those kids who had planned to play their senior year and then enroll in college for the spring semester now had to make a choice, one or the other.
But maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. And it could be because This Space was a scrub as a high school athlete – why do you think I write about sports, after all? – but the view here is that the high school athletic experience is most meaningful to those who aren’t the elite athletes, who may start or may ride the bench but cherish being part of a team and doing their best before going on to other endeavors.
“Oh, that’s very, very true and a very accurate representation of really who we are, what we are,” Wigod said. “We are about 400,000 student-athletes. And we’re certainly proud of the high-level athletes that we have and where they go from high school – our section, I think, stands very tall in any examination of where the best athletes in our nation have come from, and even the world.
“But that’s not who we are. That’s not what our main charge is. We’re student-athlete centered, academics first. We are about making the classroom outside the building a place to teach young people life lessons, and a very, very small percentage of those students are going to become professional and collegiate athletes. And that’s not our primary focus.”
And yes, Wigod said he most certainly has gotten feedback from parents of those elite athletes who are looking out for the interest of their son or daughter first and foremost.
“They just don’t get that we’re not about that,” he said. “We’re about a much larger group of young people that we get the opportunity to work with. And those are our future educators, teachers and lawyers and doctors and engineers and you name whatever it is. …
“And they’re better people because they’re involved in high school athletics, and they’re better husbands and wives and mothers and fathers and employees, and I like to say employers, I want them to be the employers. I want them to be the ones in charge. And it all comes from the experiences and the lessons they learn in our high school athletic programs: the teamwork, the perseverance to sticking together, the not allowing our differences to define us in terms of being able to work together regardless of our color and our religion and our race and our ethnicity or our socio-economic status or any of these other things that that we are told that divide us. I don’t believe that. I think our high school sports teams show us every day how people from different backgrounds can get along and set goals together as a group and try to go out there and achieve them.”
Does that sound Pollyanna-ish? To some people, I’m sure it does. And when the competitive juices start flowing, yes, sometimes character building can get stowed into the overhead bin. But high school coaches generally do understand and respect the educational component of this exercise.
Oh, and there’s one additional attribute that athletes – and every other stakeholder in high school sports – will have to develop if they haven’t already: flexibility. As noted on the day of the announcement, there’s no guarantee the new calendar will hold if the virus continues to rage and if students can’t get back into the classroom.
But having a plan in hand beats a summer of trying to figure things out against a constantly shifting landscape, as Wigod and the nine other section commissioners were attempting for nearly four months.
“My wife and I had a 25th anniversary in January and we had an 11-day trip to Hawaii that was supposed to have ended (July 20), and obviously that didn’t happen,” Wigod said.
“But that’s OK. It’s what needed to be done.”
Hundreds of thousands of high school athletes appreciate it, I’m sure.
jalexander@scng.com
@Jim_Alexander on Twitter
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