High school sports athletes suffered yet another disappointment over the weekend when Education Minster Jennifer Whiteside extended the ban on school sports tournaments and multi-school competitions.
In a letter sent to school administrators and zone representatives on Friday, BC School Sports executive director Jordan Abney said the organization had been awaiting the minister’s decision after provincial health office announced earlier in the week that community sports tournaments for kids and youth would be allowed to resume as of Tuesday, Feb. 1.
But Whiteside told BCSS the ban will continue and will be reviewed on a week-to-week basis, with no indication of when guidelines for K-12 student athletes will be revised to bring school sports in line with the directives of the provincial health office.
“We were in contact many times (last) week providing critical information on the importance of these events, and the tight timelines due upcoming zone and provincial events,” said Abney, in his letter. “We communicated that having to adapt zone events would have a significant impact on the direct financial costs for kids and their families, the costs to schools, the impact on school time missed, or events that may not even happen at all. We expressed our concern about the immense cost that our student-athletes have felt already over the past 24 months.
“Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education, has made the decision to keep the Addendum of K- 12 Guidelines in place without changes, meaning that all school sports tournaments are still prohibited from taking place,” he said. “Any event, single-day, or multi-day event with more than two teams participating cannot take place at this time. Single games may still occur, in accordance with the previous guidance provided.
“We are stunned by this decision, as there was commitment made this year to ensuring club and community sport access remained equal to school sport, and to have this decision made at such a critical time of year is disheartening for everyone involved in school sport and continues to threaten and erode at the long-term health and sustainability of school sport.”
Abney said he understands the frustration felt by student athletes, coaches, parents and supporters of school sports and said BCSS has no plans to cancel provincial championships in winter season sports such as basketball and wrestling and will continue preparing to stage those events.
After nearly two years of pandemic-related cancellations and postponements, the ministry decision is baffling to College Heights Cougars senior basketball coach Justin Rogers, especially considering many high school athletes also participate in community sports and cross over to those outside organizations for multi-team events but will not be allowed to play in tournaments with their school teams due to the ministry’s ruling.
“I’m just at a point now where whatever they want, I’ll do it, I’m kind of done fighting, it’s been almost two years of trying to get stuff done,” Rogers said.
“From the ministry’s standpoint, I would think their big thing is they’re trying to avoid what they’re calling a functional closure, which is where you have enough of the (teacher/school staff) population out sick you have to shut the school down for that three- or five-day period. But I think we all know those transitions are still going to happen no matter what, the kids will interact inside of that school.”
Grade 12 student-athletes hoping to advance to post-secondary sports are especially feeling the pinch, said Rogers, with very limited opportunities to test themselves against their age group peers. There’s been some suggestion that schools stage zone tournaments as single-day events involving just two teams at a time and having the games on two or three consecutive weekends, but the cost of travel and accommodation would be prohibitive for out-of-town teams and that is jeopardizing their involvement in those events.
“The people who are really going to suffer as we head into the backstretch of basketball is season are the small towns like Dawson Creek and Quesnel,” said Rogers. “The way the current restrictions have gone, they’ve kind of asked us to stretch zone tournaments out over the course of a couple weeks, which is not feasible. Dawson Creek has already said they won’t participate because it’s not financially feasible. I know Williams Lake has a decent team this year and it’s going to be tough for them to make it. People are frustrated.”
The College Heights Cougars senior girls, led by provincial team member Rachel Loukes, are ranked fifth in B.C. in this week’s poll but Rogers said they’ve been unable to line up other local senior girls teams willing to play them because they beat them by 50 or 60 points. He said the Duchess Park junior A boys have stepped up as the Cougars’ recent opponents.
Rogers is a social studies/English/food sciences teacher at College Heights and he says there has never been more than two or three students at one time in his group who have been sick, but he knows the problem of absenteeism has been worse at other schools. Rogers had no details on how many teachers have been sick at his school.
The Duchess Park Condors senior boys basketball team is ranked No. 3 in the triple-A poll but the Condors have played in only one tournament this season against provincial opponents of similar calibre. With just five weeks left before the provincial championship in March in Langley, Condors head coach Jordan Yu had a busy travel schedule lined up for February which is now largely on hold.
“It’s madness to me,” said Yu. “I don’t think it makes any sense to me that community sports would be allowed to have tournaments and spectators. I think high school sports does a better job at these tournaments making sure everyone is safe and is following protocols and it doesn’t make any sense to me how one would be allowed and the other wouldn’t.
“I’m hopeful there will be a decision made in the next couple days that will reverse that decision. I’m hopeful that all the letters going to the Ministry of Education kind of turns their head and makes them rethink this. You don’t want staff shortages at school and these are things we’ve been working really hard to keep the numbers down and I feel like the schools have been doing the right thing through this whole season. It’s pretty devastating news.”
The Condors are defending provincial silver medalists and are traveling to Kelowna this weekend for two games against the Kelowna Secondary Owls, ranked No. 9 among quad-A teams in the province. But as Yu points out, that’s a seven-hour trip to play two exhibition games when they could be playing four games if tournaments were allowed.
“The month of February is the time to amp up; we normally go to the Harry Ainlay tournament in Edmonton as a warm-up before our zone and provincial championships and now we’re not traveling to Alberta this year,” Yu said.
“All these things are adding up now. We were hopeful there would be a provincial championship at the Langley Events Centre but they’re worried about 50 per cent capacity and it being feasible to host provincials at the LEC now. Can BC School Sports or basketball pivot and host separate tournaments at different high schools for single-A to quadruple-A and do we have enough time to make this happen? That’s the scary part now.”
A parent-launched online petition to protest the education ministry’s decision has gathered more than 10,900 names as of early Monday afternoon.
