As schools around the country are starting to reopen, so are school sports. All students are hungry to come back to their beloved sports and represent their schools. However, there are arousing questions on how students are going to play sports while going through a pandemic. What are the precautions going to be? How are student-athletes going to be kept as safe as possible? Many questions like these bring doubtfulness into parents and students but our state has rightfully provided us the answers we needed. 

   If any student wants to participate in any sport at all they will first need to complete 6 online courses required by Broward County and the state of Florida. These courses go into depth and provide information on COVID-19 and how to minimize risk while you’re playing. They provide information on how to prevent heat illness or a concussion and much more vital information students need to learn. One of our sophomores, Xavier Lewis, interested in playing on the varsity soccer team has completed the courses and expresses how important they are. “These six courses that our school requires are really beneficial to us during these times of the pandemic. There is a lot of information that we should learn as athletes.” These courses are the first step for allowing student-athletes to participate in athletic activities. 

   When the time comes for practices, students will enter the designated training area and are required to maintain their masks on the entire time unless they are active during outdoor activities. When an athlete arrives, he or she will undergo a temperature check and an oximeter pulse check. Once an athlete passes all these checks they will be put into small groups to train. All students shall bring their own water bottles, towels, and other personal equipment. In addition to that, the sharing of coolers with cups and water fountains will be prohibited during active training. Schools all over Florida are greatly encouraged to keep interactions as low as possible but this would be difficult for some sports to follow since some sports include much interaction between each other. 

   If students are tested positive for COVID-19 and want to participate in school sports they will need documentation of two negative tests at least 24 hours apart from each other, or 10 days of no symptoms and no use of medications. Furthermore, if students have high temperatures that exceed 100.4 degrees fahrenheit then she will be isolated for 5-10 minutes and then tested again. If the student still exceeds 100.4, the student will need to be picked up immediately from school. The state of Florida and NFHS are taking no chances and their top priority is to keep the athletes safe.  

   Nevertheless, all student-athletes are excited to finally return to the fields. One freshman, Nicolas Diaz, expresses his excitement for sports to be coming back, “ School sports coming back is great news for us athletes and it can prove how hard we have been training for this day to come”. This has been the moment all athletes have been waiting for and thought would never happen. Despite all setbacks and complications, this is the athlete’s time to go for it all and show how much they have been waiting for this.