Decision overturned. Harris County youth football will play different format this fall
Harris County youth football players and cheerleaders are allowed to have their 2020 season after all.
But it will be a different version of football: flag instead of tackle.
Two weeks after the Harris County Recreation board tabled the director’s appeal of the season’s cancellation due to COVID-19 precautions, members overturned the decision Wednesday night with a 5-2-1 vote.
The following members voted to reverse the cancellation and permit the season: at-large member Thomas Vowell; Cataula representative Joe Valdes; vice chairman and Hamilton representative Steve Felt; Mountain Hill representative Brad Johnson; and Waverly Hall representative Lee Starling.
Chairman and at-large member Mike Fuson and secretary and at-large member Sondra Moss voted against the decision.
Pine Mountain representative Brandon Flector abstained.
“I’m a little ticked off it took this long to move forward,” said Mountain Hill athletics director Bill Bailey in a phone interview with the Ledger-Enquirer after the vote. He had filed the appeal.
“But I’m happy the kids will be able to play, just like the baseball kids and soccer kids,” he said.
Thursday morning, recreation department director Stephen Waskey told the Ledger-Enquirer in a phone interview the rec board’s authority is only advisory. He still is empowered to keep the season canceled.
Thursday night, however, Waskey met with the county’s youth football board and emerged with a plan to play flag football with guidelines for coronavirus precautions. The football board rejected that option last month, he said.
Registration will start as soon as possible, Waskey said. He expects the season to start around mid-September.
The news of the cancellation and the two-week delay of the appeal prompted some football players to register for baseball or soccer, Bailey said. As a result, there might not be enough players available for tackle football anyway, he said, so flag football is “better than sitting at home doing nothing.”
Large gatherings not allowed
During the heated debate at the July 29 meeting, Bailey noted a survey of more than 100 parents of football players and cheerleaders — about one-fourth of those registered last year — showing 91% want their children to participate this season.
Waskey told the L-E in a July 27 phone interview the number of people involved in a youth football game would exceed Gov. Brian Kemp’s executive order that prohibits gatherings of more than 50 people in situations such as youth sports.
The typical youth football team in Harris County has 20 players and five coaches, Waskey said. That’s 50 people for a game already, not counting officials and cheerleaders.
“Groups of more than 50 people are permitted if their grouping is transitory or incidental, or if their grouping is the result of being spread across more than one single location,” according to the governor’s executive order issued July 15.
Youth football and cheerleading in Harris County, which averages more than 400 children ages 5-13 in both sports, involve close contact among the participants. Social-distancing accommodations are more practical in the other fall sports, Waskey said.
“Baseball players don’t have that much contact,” he said, “and in soccer, you can space out on the field and have a new 3-foot halo rule.”
Bailey said he is grateful the board members who approved the appeal are “standing up for the children in Harris County.”
As for the status in Muscogee County, Columbus Youth Football president Ku’Wonna Ingram told the L-E Thursday afternoon the season still is postponed indefinitely. The league expects to hear from the Columbus Parks and Recreation Department by Aug. 21, she said.
“We advised the league that we would follow up with them by that date for further discussion,” department director Holli Browder confirmed in an email to the L-E.
This story was originally published August 12, 2020 at 10:14 PM.
