Basketball, volleyball starts next week for San Mateo Union High School District schools

COVID testing will be conducted by Inspire Diagnostics, with the first tests set to be administered Tuesday. SMUHSD — composed of Aragon, Burlingame, Capuchino, Hillsdale, Mills and San Mateo high schools — is unique among the county’s five public high school districts in that it will play exclusively against teams from its own district.

“We’re [fortunate] that we happen to be a league of six [schools],” Aragon athletic director Steve Sell said. “It certainly makes it easier when you have one health coordinator for everybody, and all the principals, everybody is operating on the same page. This is hard enough to get off the ground, because it’s not off the ground yet.”

Of the other districts that compose the traditional Peninsula Athletic League, Sequoia Union High School District and Half Moon Bay High School (of the Cabrillo High School District) are seeking a merger to form one league in the south for the 2021 season. Likewise, in the north, South San Francisco Unified School District and the Jefferson Union High School District are seeking to merge.

None of the districts composing these tentative north and south leagues have finalized agreements to merge, or to schedule games.

“There’s nothing official yet, but we’re really hoping that we can create a league with them,” Half Moon Bay athletic director Brendan Roth said. “I have been meeting with [Sequoia Union’s athletic directors] this week. We’re really hopeful. But it’s still got to climb the ladder and gain approval.”

SMUHSD is coordinating for the mandatory 48-hour window between administering COVID testing and playing games. It may be necessary to test twice per week in order to execute a game schedule, which is currently slated to play games Thursdays and Fridays. Much relies on the efficiency of Tuesday’s testing, to measure the turnaround of test results.

Teams are scheduled to play back-to-back games with the same opponents in a given week, alternating venues home and away. For example, Aragon is slated to play San Mateo this coming week, April 22-23. Thursday, the boys’ basketball team will host at one school, while the girls’ basketball team hosts at the other. The teams will alternate venues Friday.

“That way it’s a bit safer because you’re going to play the same people back-to-back days,” Sell said. “So, that way you’re not changing the cohort that the test is good for.”

Players and teams, however, are being asked to ready themselves for game action in a hurry. County teams were cleared to practice indoors at the beginning of March. Prior to this, county high school teams could only practice outdoors. There was some allowance for indoor practices prior to March on an individual basis, with one athlete, wearing a mask, allowed to shoot around at a basket at a time. Players were not allowed to share a ball indoors until March.

Now that teams can practice indoors, the abbreviated practice schedule is going to affect game play, according to Jefferson athletic director John Falabella.

“Could we bounce the basketball? Yes. But would it be high quality basketball? Probably not,” Falabella said. “But getting games in for the kids, that’s No. 1. So, our readiness, that’s irrelevant.”

Jefferson Union and South San Francisco Unified are looking to merge their four schools — El Camino, Jefferson, South San Francisco and Terra Nova — into one league. But coordinating an effective testing window is hampering hopes of implementing a schedule. And the clock is ticking on the school year. Jefferson Union will be holding graduation May 25, with SSF Unified holding graduation May 28.

El Camino co-athletic director Jeff Cosico said he hopes for the current orange tier — requiring student athletes to be tested in order to play — to change to the less restrictive yellow tier. Of course, a tier change is not imminent.

“The talk was, if we’re still in orange, you’d have to test in order to play,” Cosico said. “But if we go to yellow, which could be tomorrow, the tests aren’t mandated. But we’re doing it anyway for the safety aspects of it, so the parents know we’re doing it right.”

The SMUHSD is also looking to start wrestling before the end of the school year, but wrestlers have not been cleared to practice as of yet. A testing program must be established for wrestling to even begin practicing.

“We want to test wrestling and let them actually wrestle before they have a match,” Sell said.

The common theme between all the county’s districts is the want to allow student athletes to participate in some semblance of a season.

“I speak to the resilience of these kids because it’s been such a long slog for them,” Roth said. “So, now that they’re playing basketball, they deserve so much credit for sticking with this process because it’s been brutal for them.”