New Youth Sports Guidance

More baby steps:
Today Orange County finally fell below State's threshold (100 case rate and 8% positivity rate) needed to allow in-person schools. OC will need to stay under this threshold for 14 days to re-open school. While there is no such clear guideline for youth sports, if in-person school is allowed, it's much easier to make a case for contact practice/scrimmage.
FYI Messi....this was reported from Voice of OC today.

But the state’s reporting system glitched and there’s a backlog of up to 300,000 test results that haven’t been reported to counties yet, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services.


“That failure led to inaccurate case numbers and case positivity rates,” Ghaly said at a Friday news conference.
 
Really? Someone below me said the same thing! Lol Have you seen the tons of other posts with the same type of speculation?
No I haven't. I could care less that you posted it. But you have an issue with people floating rumors and you did just that. Found it rather ironic.
 
In this time of uncertainty, everyone will have a rumor and chances are that club soccer will start in....2021. The state of NY is allowing kids to go back to school I believe. Let’s see how they do and this will determine if California has a chance for soccer games before December.
To me the most annoying part is that youth baseball teams are already scrimmaging this weekend. Soccer follows the rule and nobody else does.
 
In this time of uncertainty, everyone will have a rumor and chances are that club soccer will start in....2021. The state of NY is allowing kids to go back to school I believe. Let’s see how they do and this will determine if California has a chance for soccer games before December.
To me the most annoying part is that youth baseball teams are already scrimmaging this weekend. Soccer follows the rule and nobody else does.
This weekend? Try since mid may
 
I heard a huge rumor this morning from a friend who is a fly on the wall at Big Club meetings. His dd is a true Unicorn as well so he gets the inside scoops. I promised him I wouldnt come on here and share the rumor. My lips are sealed.

 
In this time of uncertainty, everyone will have a rumor and chances are that club soccer will start in....2021. The state of NY is allowing kids to go back to school I believe. Let’s see how they do and this will determine if California has a chance for soccer games before December.
To me the most annoying part is that youth baseball teams are already scrimmaging this weekend. Soccer follows the rule and It nobody else does.
It is like comparing apples and oranges. Two completely different games.
 
It is like comparing apples and oranges. Two completely different games.
For weeks we have had Texas playing full-contact, non-socially-distanced soccer in the midst of one of the worst outbreaks in the nation - yet we hear nothing of new cases from this. Go into a bar or a house party, you have a decent shot at making the news. Play soccer outside, not so much. As I stated previously, the risk is not 0, but it has been shown to be very small. Trust me, there are millions of turtles out there waiting to say "I told you so" when they can trace any case to youth sports. We'll know it when it happens - and the risk will still be very small.
 
For weeks we have had Texas playing full-contact, non-socially-distanced soccer in the midst of one of the worst outbreaks in the nation - yet we hear nothing of new cases from this. Go into a bar or a house party, you have a decent shot at making the news. Play soccer outside, not so much. As I stated previously, the risk is not 0, but it has been shown to be very small. Trust me, there are millions of turtles out there waiting to say "I told you so" when they can trace any case to youth sports. We'll know it when it happens - and the risk will still be very small.
You’re right of course. Unfortunately for us in CA, weighing up risk and using common sense seems to have completely disappeared.

For anyone not glued to the mainstream media, it’s clear that this issue runs way deeper than the safety of kids. That’s why we won’t be playing games here anytime soon.

For those outside of LA County, it sounds like kids can now practice without masks so they can engage in meaningful, intense soccer training. That’s at least something positive. Hopefully for those of us within LA County, we are also afforded that ‘luxury’ soon and the sight of kids in masks, in their own ‘lanes’, tapping the ball side to side, disappears.

Plenty of posters on this forum have already mentioned that this is an opportunity for youth players to really work on their game individually; IMO it’s a necessity, not an option. For players who don’t truly love playing and don’t want to do the individual work to maintain their touch, sharpness and fitness, maybe this is the ideal time to move on to another sport or interest.
 
You’re right of course. Unfortunately for us in CA, weighing up risk and using common sense seems to have completely disappeared.

For anyone not glued to the mainstream media, it’s clear that this issue runs way deeper than the safety of kids. That’s why we won’t be playing games here anytime soon.

For those outside of LA County, it sounds like kids can now practice without masks so they can engage in meaningful, intense soccer training. That’s at least something positive. Hopefully for those of us within LA County, we are also afforded that ‘luxury’ soon and the sight of kids in masks, in their own ‘lanes’, tapping the ball side to side, disappears.

Plenty of posters on this forum have already mentioned that this is an opportunity for youth players to really work on their game individually; IMO it’s a necessity, not an option. For players who don’t truly love playing and don’t want to do the individual work to maintain their touch, sharpness and fitness, maybe this is the ideal time to move on to another sport or interest.

Where do those of us not glued to the mainstream media get our information?
 
For weeks we have had Texas playing full-contact, non-socially-distanced soccer in the midst of one of the worst outbreaks in the nation - yet we hear nothing of new cases from this. Go into a bar or a house party, you have a decent shot at making the news. Play soccer outside, not so much. As I stated previously, the risk is not 0, but it has been shown to be very small. Trust me, there are millions of turtles out there waiting to say "I told you so" when they can trace any case to youth sports. We'll know it when it happens - and the risk will still be very small.

If we want to compare other states which do things differently CNN news feed popped up with this today

California needs there own unique approach to minimizing the risks, nobody can predict what the risks are right now, it's all a guessing game. Pick wrong and the results can be pretty far reaching.

CIF took a conservative approach and pushed soccer back so has most of college sports also for now.
 
https://www.theonion.com is always very informative ;)

This onion sort of has a local soccer connection --

 
If we want to compare other states which do things differently CNN news feed popped up with this today

California needs there own unique approach to minimizing the risks, nobody can predict what the risks are right now, it's all a guessing game. Pick wrong and the results can be pretty far reaching.

CIF took a conservative approach and pushed soccer back so has most of college sports also for now.
Did they catch COVID-19 playing soccer outside?
 
There really should be some clarity and they should just announce that no competitions will occur this fall. End of story.

Yes, in terms of death and severe illness, children seem to be at an extremely low risk. But I think it's short-sighted to use that as the only barometer to assess risk to the community. We still don't know the exact transmissions rates for asymptomatic kids with some preliminary studies suggesting kids from ages to 10 to 18 spread it just as easily as adults. And with kids under 10, they've been mostly locked down for the past 6 months, so we simply don't know yet.

The concern isn't necessarily my daughter is going to die from playing an outdoor scrimmage. The concern is if she picks up COVID and becomes a asymptomatic carrier and brings it home. I have hypertension. So while my daughter is in the very low risk category, i'm definitely higher risk. Our kids don't get to play soccer in a bubble. Parents pick them up and they live at home with adults who may be older or have underline conditions. Especially in middle / lower income communities, the adults may have health conditions that are undiagnosed. So until we have more concrete data, I think it's prudent to be overly cautious.

As for other states running youth competitions, a few people brought up Texas and Arizona as good examples.. I'm not sure why we're using them as good examples for running youth competitions when they've just had huge surges in cases. Our tracing system is almost non-existent, so we don't really know what the primary vectors of transmission are. It seems we're only effective at tracking hospitalizations and deaths and transmissions up to one degree of separation at this point. Yes indoor bars/clubs are high risk, but there's little data on things that might spread at a moderate/low level.

Also unlike other states, we (California) have several HUGE metropolitan areas, so the stakes are higher. We're not as dense as New York, so I din't think we'll ever see things accelerate like it did over there. But due to our huge population with diverse communities and local governments, if things go really sideways, it'll be very hard to put things back in the toothpaste. We're not like some Midwest state with 1-2 mid-size/large cities surrounded by empty space. Locking down one city basically stops their COVID cases. We have large and small communities sprawled out everywhere. In SoCal, you can't drive for more than 5 minutes and not end up in another city or community. It's why when OC restricted training for youth sports, a bunch of OC clubs flooded into the north county of SD. It's very easy for us to move around to other large communities. This means California can't have the same guidelines as Kansas or Utah. New York brought their numbers down by being extremely draconian. It sucked but it was necessary due to the high density of their population. Our overly cautious guidelines also suck, but I also think it's necessary given our population, geography, and diversity. We have to have guidelines that are suited for California, not Arizona.

I love soccer. My kids love soccer. I definitely miss watching them play. But the one upside to this situation is that my daughter has discovered other things she loves as well. The break from endless traveling, training, and tournaments has created space for her to explore other interests. The attitude of us parents can also affect our child's well-being during the pandemic. If we're constantly sulking and complaining about the unfairness of everything, then our kids will feed off that negativity and be miserable as well. Let's not define our kid's happiness by whether they can play in Surf Cup at the end of September or in Presidio/CSL/SCDSL/DPL/GDA/MLSDA/ECNL/NPL this fall. Just encourage them to still get touches and exercise but let them explore various interests that they would normally never have time to do. Focus on trying to make this fall school year at least somewhat comfortable whether it's online only or in-person distance learning, that's going to be a challenge in itself.

Just in terms of priorities with everything your child has to deal with and the uncertainty with the pandemic I think fall soccer competitions rank pretty low. Someone needs to put their big boy/girl pants on and just announce in a clear declarative sentence that every youth club will understand, "THERE WILL BE NO YOUTH COMPETITIONS IN 2020". Done. The remaining 4 months of 2020 will be focused on training with hopefully the return of competitions in 2021, which should be ample prep time for organizers and for consumer confidence to return.
 
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