High school football during COVID-19 is ‘child exploitation,’ local coach says
You don’t have to guess Russell County head football coach Mark Rose’s feelings on playing high school football during a global pandemic.
Rose played football for Pat Dye at Auburn, and had coached high school football for more than 20 years. But he’s less than thrilled about playing the sport during the age of COVID-19.
“I mean it’s flat out child exploitation,” Rose said to Tom Goldman on NPR’s All Things Considered. “Of course kids want to play. But we are charged to protect them.”
Rose told NPR that an asymptomatic outbreak within the Warriors locker room landed a 33-year-old assistant coach in ICU for nearly two weeks.
One player’s mother was also infected.
Rose told NPR that he cannot protect his players because of a lack of COVID-19 testing.
There is not a policy in the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s COVID-19 protocols for testing football players.
“We’re breaking every rule that every doctor in the world says,” Rose said. “We’re not going face-to-face (in) school, yet we’re running players into each other all week, and sending them home untested. And then on Friday night, they want us to go out there and run them in, 100 on our sideline and 100 on the other sideline, and all we know is nobody out there has been tested.”
Rose’s Warriors have not played a game this year.
The Warriors’ first game, against Smiths Station, was canceled and deemed a forfeit loss after the Russell County School District postponed fall sports until early September. Last week’s game against Park Crossing was canceled after a Russell County player tested positive for COVID-19.
The Warriors’ game against Valley, scheduled for this Friday, has also been canceled, and Eufaula has moved its senior night to Sept. 25, despite Russell County serving as its final home game.
“Some of the them folks at the (AHSAA) need to come look some of these people in the eye and see the fear they have and see me telling them to keep their son home and work out,” Rose told NPR, “because I fear for their health.
“It’s more important than football.”
This story was originally published September 8, 2020 at 3:34 PM.
