What are you guys doing with your kids as it relates to Covid and their activities?
I'm torn on this and really struggle with what to do in some cases.
Specific example - my son will be a high school freshman this fall. He's a pretty talented basketball player and plays AAU baskteball in the spring. His team has started practicing again and had a tournament this past weekend. We were out of town so didn't have to decide but now that we are back he will want to play. As boring as I find baseball I'd be happy to let him play it as it's outdoors and naturally social distanced.
I tried to do a poll to get a feel for what others are doing. Too many choices, so had to limit it as best I could. Please provide explanations and what you guys are doing.
I help run the feeder program for our local high school - locally some AAU teams are back to practice and have started tournaments. We are not going to do that for the obvious safety reasons. That many people in an enclosed environment is a recipe for disaster. As much as possible we will follow CIF guidelines for our younger teams like we are doing for the high school team. One difference is that our program is truly focused on player development and getting them ready for high school, none of the coaches use it to make a living, which I think is a driving reason for why some of these teams are pushing to get back to practice and have tournaments.
For the high school, we are supposed to start back up tomorrow, but there is still a chance that it all gets cancelled (a local school district cancelled all activities last night, just a matter of time for others to follow suit) - we will have major social distancing rules in place - temperatures and parental sign off of no symptoms within an hour before every practice, limited to keeping kids in "pods" of I believe no more than 10-12 kids - outdoors can have groups up to 50, but still separated into smaller pods with no intermingling in the larger group. If indoors, no more than 10 people total including player and coaches. No sharing of balls, so that means no passing, no rebounding for someone else, etc. Will be primarily conditioning, ballhandling and shooting. No games. Kids wear masks to/from practice. Parents drop off only, no loitering, as much as possible prefer no carpooling, especially if in different pods to help prevent cross contamination, but they admit they can not enforce that as it is not on school grounds.
Me personally, coming from the background as a coach, the risk of practicing indoors and especially in playing tournaments is not worth it at this point in time. But I am comfortable with my son doing the outdoor training, and the "pod" he is in with his teammates is his close circle of friends that he has seen and gone to the beach with anyway, so it is not really any additional exposure.
My middle son just started soccer practice for his club last week - similar guidelines in place - temperature before practice, mask to/from field, players spread out on field. He's a goalie, but for now still no shots or using hands, so he is getting a lot of extra footwork in.
E2A: From your list, the only box I checked was hanging out in small groups - for the kids it's the same small group of friends, it is almost all exclusively outdoors (bike riding, beach) and with parents that we trust to be fairly safe with social distancing. It's not living in a bubble strict, but it is allowing relatively low risk activities. No large gatherings, nothing indoors (other than maybe running to bathroom, etc.) and other than some outdoor training similar to what I noted above, no sports, definitely nothing with contact.
