High school football in the fall in Northern Section? Get seasons played if you can

I drove throughout the northern part of California twice this summer. Destination: Oregon.

No music, no discussion. Just wide-open space and thought.

Zipped past Arbuckle, Colusa, Williams and Willows. Twisting roads and long stretches of highway included views or signage mention of Corning, Cottonwood, Dunsmuir, Mount Shasta and Weed, with exit signs showing Burney, Fall River and McCloud. A return route home included treks through, near and around Arcata, Ferndale, Fortuna, Willits and Upper Lake and Lower Lake.

Collectively, it hit me like a knee to the face mask: Why not here or there? Why can’t the smalls step up big big time?

Why can’t high school football, volleyball and cross country play out this fall in remote regions dotted throughout Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou, Tehama and Trinity counties, to name a few?

They might, and they should, and our focus here is on the small schools, if given clearance from school districts and county health guidelines as high school programs across the state continue to deal and navigate the coronavirus.

The California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for prep sports, announced on July 20 that its sports calendar for the 2020-2021 academic year was pushed back, meaning fall sports become winter activities, and others were pushed into the spring. Anything to help quell the virus and to prevent it from infecting a team or a campus.

But of the 10 sections that govern prep sports across the state, the Northern Section announced it plans to still kick off seasons in the fall, if COVID-19 numbers don’t creep in at dangerous levels. That section stretches from Sutter County to the Oregon border.

“We are not taking high school sports off the table for the fall,” said Northern Section commissioner Liz Kyle, who added that it was the decision of that section’s Executive Committee to at least give it a go.

To that, we say bravo and kudos. Give it a go until someone says otherwise.

On Friday, someone said otherwise, stalling some of those ambitions. The larger schools in the Northern Section changed course for football in deciding to go with the rest of the CIF’s schedule and go with football and volleyball in winter/spring seasons. This came after Butte County that includes Chico, Enterprise, Foothill, Pleasant Valley, Red Bluff and Shasta landed on the state’s COVID-19 watch list.

But for the smaller schools? It can still be a go, maybe.

How the sports would work

The CIF laid out a schedule but it is up to each of the 10 section commissioners to take it from there for their own regions.

The Northern Section programs that are cleared may not be able to start football until October, as it may take that long for county health departments and school districts to decide for sure. If not, the Northern Section could align with the rest of the state and move fall sports into later seasons, but I cannot see all schools in the Northern Section doing so. Football will be played at various spots up north.

Coaches of some mountain schools in the section are discussing the idea of fall football to get a season in before the winter season takes hold. Some mountain schools such as Fall River are at 3,300 feet, and all play on natural grass.

The other sections are not in the dark or operating out of fear, though a flood of parents will argue on social media to the contrary, insisting the coronavirus concerns are rooted out of politics more than safety.

The Northern Section is unique in that it is the largest in the state in terms of geographical space. It includes the smallest schools from the smallest towns in the state, meaning the lowest enrollment numbers, all spread over 13 counties. The Northern Section also includes some of the lowest COVID-19 numbers.

Forty seven of the 73 schools in the Northern Section have fewer than 500 students. Smaller campuses make it easier to social distance as many Northern Section schools plan to start with in-class studies. Football rosters of 20-25 players also make it more manageable with modified football workouts.

“We also have the largest amount of two- or three-sport athletes in the state because we have so many small schools, and two or three-sport coaches, too, so it would be hard to spread everyone so thin if all the sports seasons are at the same time,” said Kyle, the Northern Section commissioner. “The plan the CIF came up with is a good one but it doesn’t necessarily meet the needs of our section, and if local health departments say it’s OK to participate, we will. We hope to get some of our students in our section back on campus, for their health and well being.”

Get seasons in when you can, while you can

Surrendering a state playoff outside the CIF calendar would be worth it, Northern Section coaches say, because a fall schedule would feel normal. And coaches and athletes don’t want to wait if they don’t have to.

California is not a one-size-fits-all state in terms of prep sports, leading me to conclude: Get seasons in when you can, where you can, while you can.

“We’re going to do anything and everything we can to have fall sports, like football, and we’ll practice and play ourselves if we have to, and we’ll drive to other parts of the state or Idaho to get a game in, if we can,” Fall River football coach Todd Sloat said. “We feel an obligation to the kids, to the community, and it’s a main reason so many kids in small towns go to school — sports or anything extracurricular. We have to do anything we can, with safety protocols, to let these kids have these experiences.”

Fall River is the epitome of the Northern Section, a tiny region in Shasta County flanked with neighboring McArthur. The Fall River campus goes from seventh grade to twelfth, with enrollments ranging from 200-240 students.

Kids grow up wanting to play sports in Fall River. Some need the experience to stay on track to graduate, or to steer clear of trouble.

“We have a lot of at-risk kids in the Northern Section, and they need positive experiences,” Sloat said.

Sloat played quarterback for Fall River in the early 1980s and kept dreaming big. He played quarterback at UC Davis and married his high school sweetheart, who also grew up in the Northern Section. Her name is Kelly Freeland-Sloat. She’s the Fall River principal.

Kyle used to be the Fall River principal. She is deeply rooted in the Northern Section, a Durham High graduate who played sports there in the 1970s as Title IX gender-equity mandates came into play. She played volleyball at Wake Forest and then came full circle to get into education.

“Those early days of playing high school sports,” Kyle said, “meant everything to me. I know what sports means to kids and towns.”

No snow football

Northern Section schools live for fall football Friday nights. They start in the heat of August and conclude in the chill of November. Fans flock to games, some squeezed into letterman’s jackets from earlier decades.

Coaches at Northern Section schools dread the idea of starting a pushed-back football season, meaning practices in 2 feet of snow in December and January.

A winter practice start for football isn’t a weather concern in much of the state. It doesn’t snow in Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Fresno or San Francisco.

It does up north in Chester, Dunsmuir and Hayfork, where eight-man football has replaced 11-man ball in recent decades due to declining enrollment. Football by any measure or number doesn’t always work in snow on dirt fields with temperatures in the teens or 20s. It’s not cool to chill in ice and snow. It’s frostbite frigid.

“We had a Northern Section Division 5 championship game up here in November and we had to plow the field of snow to see the yard markers,” Kyle said. “It was a dusting of snow, but in January and February, it’s a lot of snow.”

And a lot of angst.

“Football practice in Susanville with a foot of snow, five days a week? That’s ridiculous,” said Aaron Williams, who has taught media courses in the Shasta-Redding area, coached sports in the region for years and pens articles for ShastaCountySports.com and MaxPreps.

Williams grew up a Navy brat, living in San Diego, Washington D.C., Virginia, Georgia, Hawaii and the Bay Area, where he went to De La Salle High in Concord, later graduating from San Jose State. He has lived in Redding since 2000, and he’s hooked on the Northern Section vibe with four sons playing sports at Shasta High.

“The North section is still small-town Friday night fun, where you knew the kids growing up, small-town stuff in the middle of America,” Williams said. “High school sports mean everything to people here, and it’s where you learn to become a better husband, a better wife, a better parent, a better co-worker, citizen, person. That’s why high school sports are so great, and that’s why they are so needed.”