Nobody wants to be the bad guy

Practices start Monday for high school athletes in Missouri just as one of the state’s professional teams continues to deal with an outbreak of COVID-19 and the number of new cases statewide remain high.

Earlier this week, MSHSAA changed course by allowing schools not meeting in person to participate in sports and activities.

“With the changing face of the start of the school year for our member schools, the Board and staff want to discuss possibilities that would allow as many students to participate as safely as possible,” said MSHSAA Executive Director Dr. Kerwin Urhahn in a statement before the meeting. “The Association wants to work with schools to provide as many opportunities as possible. For the schools currently planning to start the year as normal, our current hope is that the fall season will proceed to its fruition.”

What has changed since late March when the pandemic forced schools into online-only learning and the cancellation of spring sports?

The seven-day average of confirmed cases in Missouri didn’t get above 253 in May while it’s currently over 1,000. Over the past two weeks, Butler County has seen 88 new cases of the virus while over the past month, the number of cases for people under the age of 20 increased from nine to 25.

MSHSAA, much like the NCAA, is an organization that only exists because individual schools around the state created it in during the 1925-26 school year. Each year every district votes on proposed changes to rules and each school can petition the organization’s Board of Directors to address issues.

That’s what happened here.

In July, when the seven-day average for new cases was around 600, MSHSAA set guidelines for sports to return this fall. School districts that were starting the year online didn’t want to be left out of the state championship series. They didn’t want to tell their student-athletes they couldn’t play while others around the state were able to and it ended up being more schools than MSHSAA thought.

There were threats of mass transfers to school districts or states that were open.

How can you have a state championship without St. Louis or Kansas City?

In the spring, MSHSAA followed its own bylaws that were probably set up without anything like what’s happening in mind. While the Board loosened some rules over the summer, it stood firm on the idea that there should not be sports without in-person education.

MSHSAA could have followed Illinois and pushed football, soccer and volleyball to the spring, hoping things improve. It could have canceled the state championship portion and told schools to play only conference opponents to minimize travel and exposure.

It did what it had to do to keep what it has, member schools willing to give it power. MSHSAA says it was started, in part, as “an attempt to control abuses that were creeping into the interscholastic program.”

MSHSAA is not the state’s education department, which can shut down all schools. It’s not the health department, which can close places that pose a risk to a community. MSHSAA only sets the rules for schools to be eligible for postseason participation it holds.

Now it’s up to each individual school district to determine if it is safe for students to attend class, practice together and compete against other schools. It’s up to each individual parent to determine if their student should attend school or play a sport. It’s up to the fans to determine if they want to attend contests.

When nobody wants to be the bad guy it can put everybody in a bad position.