(MacDre, Love you man. Point being, this note is for clarification, not admonishment. And much of it is also for the hoi polloi...)
Washington came out with guidelines back in September and then revised on 11/16. Oregon did the same and then revised the their guidelines on 12/3. The National Federation of High School's Sports Medicine Advisory Committee came out with their guidelines back in May.
In all the guidelines mentioned above (links to docs are below), soccer is listed as low to medium risk sport similar to baseball, women's lacrosse etc. And this seems to be the general standard for states ranging form Massachusetts to Texas. California's guidance is the outlier.
(Washington and Oregon are important because Newsom joined the governors from those two states back in April to "collectively identify clear “indicators for communities to restart public life and business.”
Said the LA Times at the time, "The governors broadly described a few basic principles they agreed to follow as they develop strategies to return some level of normalcy to their states. The governors said they will be guided by data, prioritize health over politics and work together and with local communities.")
As you know, with this low to medium risk classification, inter-team youth soccer games - with caveats - would be allowed in CA counties if said counties were in the Red zone.
Right now, as a "high risk" sport similar, according to the Gov and his guys, to rugby and football, soccer will only be allowed when a county gets to Orange.
Based on previous Covid data, the difference btw Red and Orange level sports restarting is likely months, not days or weeks, which boils down to basically a determination that some Orange level sports are very unlikely to have any season before the end of the school year.
Per a number of anecdotal reports on this forum and elsewhere, it also sounds like the pre-12/14 CA guidance, that was largely complete back in September, originally also classified soccer as a low to medium risk sport.
Would assume that, with the flack/narrative Newsom was getting for being a "do as I say, not as I do" governor, politics - not data or health - drove the decision to move, late in the game, soccer from the low to medium risk tier to high risk.
(it came to light in early December that one of Newsom's kids reportedly plays on a norcal club soccer team that reportedly went to the Thanksgiving tournament in Phoenix that got called out by CNN and other major media outlets)
People have talked about a soccer lobby.
Based on the results we're seeing, we don't have a soccer lobby.
Alas, despite literally millions of CA kids playing organized soccer. For example, in our area, doing the math, it's close to 1 in 4 kids playing soccer. As former political consultant in another life, am appalled by the lack of a soccer community voice in the CA youth sports guideline decision making.
per the data and the science, moving soccer to a red level, low to medium risk categorization from the current orange level, high risk categorization is the right thing to do.
And re-categorizing soccer would have a tangible benefit to our kids, getting back to normalcy faster for a broad spectrum of family income levels
And having an accessible goal/light at the end of the tunnel for soccer would likely lead to less pressure travel, thus would have significant health benefits.
Here's the link to the most recent (11/16) WA guidelines:
https://www.governor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/COVID19 Phase 2 and 3 Sporting Activities Guidance.pdf
Here's the link to the most recent (12/3) OR guidelines:
https://www.osaa.org/docs/osaainfo/Outdoor Recreation Guidance.pdf
Here's the link to the NFHS Sports Medicine guidelines:
https://nfhs.org/media/3812287/2020...nd-activities-nfhs-smac-may-15_2020-final.pdf
