Kansas health chief: School sports risky, but it would be ‘great’ if they can play
Scrapping school sports would definitely reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus, but those and other extracurricular activities may be necessary to maintain student-athletes’ mental health, Kansas’ top health official said Wednesday.
Asked whether he’d advise canceling fall sports amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Kansas Health Secretary Dr. Lee Norman said: “I think those things are important and if they can be done safely to mitigate the risk, I think it would be great to continue with them.”
He said he favors leaving the decision to local school boards whether to proceed with the upcoming seasons, most notably fall football.
“The public health advice I think that I would give is that this would be a ‘gap year’ for doing anything that’s truly optional and stick with the things that are truly essential for schools,” said Norman, a physician and secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. “From a public health perspective, there’s no question we would reduce the risk of disease transmission were we not to have those (sports).”
But he added that raises another question: “Are athletics, extracurricular activities of various kinds essential to one’s quality of life, mental health, etc.?”
Norman’s comments differed from those of Gov. Laura Kelly during her weekly update on COVID-19 issues.
On Monday Kelly advised schools and universities to consider flipping schedules and having low-risk sports, such as golf, tennis and cross-county in the fall, while postponing football and other close-contact sports to the spring semester, when chances are better that there will be a vaccine for the coronavirus.
This story was originally published August 26, 2020 at 5:19 PM.
