When the coronavirus ground our world to a halt last year, NCAA teams were at the cusp of March Madness, and in the run-up to the NBA playoffs, disrupting those two seasons. High school hoopsters, though, got to finish their seasons and crown a champion before locking down.
With the virus moving in uncertain directions this fall and winter, this high school hoops season is in flux, and in some cases, it’s online.
Basketball is unsafe during the pandemic, health experts say. It’s indoors. Players get winded and start breathing heavily. The defender tends to have his or her head pretty close to the head of the player he or she is covering. Teammates huddle. Droplets could get passed around more than the ball does.
“Do not allow indoor sports or activities such as basketball or wrestling, based upon the level of community transmission and consequently, [and] the risks involved,” health officials around Kansas City, Kansas, pleaded with local school chiefs. The local government, Wyandotte County, mandated masks during gameplay and banned fans and cheerleaders.
One local basketball mecca, Piper High School, took these rules and recommendations to heart and made a tough decision: They’ll just go on the road, playing all their games outside of the county and outside of the reach of the local health officials, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Others are finding ways to play amid the restrictions. In the suburbs of Washington, D.C., public schools are just opening up after Thanksgiving, and they’re launching straight into basketball season, just without fans. Other counties will allow only a handful of fans, even in massive high school gyms. In northern Virginia, school districts are compensating for this by accelerating the nascent practice of installing webcams in high school gyms.
In recent years, these cameras enabled the grandparents in Illinois to watch Conor’s or Emma’s big games, but now, they’ll be the only way to watch in some places. “In Prince William County, high-quality digital cameras were installed at high school fields and gyms within the last two years,” reported the Prince William Times in northern Virginia. “Fauquier County is putting them in its three high schools right now.”
The cameras cost about $2,500 each, and they automatically follow the ball. The livestreams show the score, the period, and the clock. The National Federation of State High School Associations will stream the games to subscribers who pay about $5 or $6 per month.
That’s a better deal than ESPN is offering.
