Illinois high school basketball coaches have started their campaign to try and ensure the basketball season starts as scheduled in mid-November. It’s a bit different in tone from the Let Us Play campaign that has advocated over the last two months for football and all fall sports to be reinstated in protests around the state.
The Illinois Basketball Coaches Association released the results of a survey of the state’s basketball coaches on Monday. Nearly 800 coaches responded to the survey, which collected data on how contact days (supervised practices, basically) went during COVID-19. The Illinois High School Association allowed coaches 20 days of contact with their teams.
St. Ignatius basketball coach Matt Monroe, a member of the IBCA’s Executive board, said approximately 60 percent of the respondents were boys basketball coaches and 40 percent were girls coaches.
Contact days were used in July and August or are happening currently. Fifty-one percent of coaches said they used their contact days over the summer. Seven percent of those coaches reported positive COVID-19 cases on their teams, usually 1 to 2 cases.
Sixty-nine percent of coaches are currently using their contact days. Nine percent of those coaches reported known COVID-19 cases involving members of their program (coaches or players). Most had one to two cases. Only two coaches reported an outbreak of three to five total cases.
“The nine percent isn’t nine percent of the people that are playing,” Monroe said. “That’s the amount of programs. We had about 60 kids participating in contact days. Most schools would have at least 20. So the percentage of participants that had cases is much lower than nine percent.”
Players have been wearing masks and adhering to social distancing rules during almost all of the contact days. Masks were not required statewide the first day or two back in July.
Chicago Public Schools did not allow teams to conduct contact days, so a large percentage of the respondents that didn’t hold contact days were likely in the city.
Monroe said the IBCA is in regular contact with the Illinois High School Association and hopes to get the survey to the Illinois Department of Health and Governor J.B. Pritzker’s office.
The coaches surveyed were overwhelmingly in favor of starting the season on time. Ninety-five percent want to start as scheduled on Nov. 16 and 81 percent said they believed their school districts would allow basketball to start on time. 18 percent were uncertain what their school district would permit and fewer than one percent was sure basketball wouldn’t be allowed.
“Our main concern is the health and safety of players and families and officials,” Monroe said. “We wanted to collect and share the data. Obviously it is our hope that we can play the season on time. But we are not medical officials. We leave the decisions on what mitigations should be in place to the health professionals.”
According to the youth sports guidelines set down by Pritzker and the IDPH, basketball is a medium-risk sport currently at Level 2, which only allows practices and intra-team scrimmages. The IDPH would have to move it to Level 3 to allow any competitive games. There has been no word on what metrics that would require. The IHSA has previously said it hoped to hear that information from the IDPH this month.
“The data collected by the IBCA only helps to re-enforce the IHSA’s stance that sports, including those dubbed medium and high risk, can be safely conducted within the parameters adopted by the IHSA from the IDPH,” IHSA spokesperson Matt Troha said. “We have state and national statistics we have shared with IDPH via Deputy Governor Ruiz that reach similar conclusions. We will continue to work with Deputy Governor Ruiz and IDPH in the hopes that they will recognize that we can allow greater athletic participation, while also mitigating the spread of COVID-19. We appreciate our longstanding partnership with the IBCA, and the work they continue to do advocating for student-athletes.”
