Scoring Points: Saving Spring Sports

Just For Fun
Recruiting, Spring, spring sports, sports, Gentry

(Although Kemp has since closed schools for the remainder of the year. FYN Sunday Edition is still running this opinion in its original form to highlight some Georgia student athletes and their efforts for Spring Sports this year.)

With Georgia Governor Brian Kemp extending order for schools to remain closed until April 24th, April 27th is the new date that everyone should have circled on their calendars. That is the date that schools will reopen and high school sports should resume, however the threat of Covid-19 cancelling the rest of the spring season still lingers. Georgia High School Student-Athletes are starting to voice their concerns about the cancellation of their season. In an effort to perhaps calm some of those fears, GHSA Executive Director Dr. Robin Hines said Friday that Georgia still hopes to have some sort of spring sports this year.

Hines told a reporter of the Oconee Enterprise, “We would do everything that we could do to have some sort of abbreviated season and abbreviated championships. That would be our first goal that we would like to see happen. That goes on down to it being after the school year ends where it’s safe to do things again to allow schools to play games and have a senior night. The worst case scenario would be to cancel the spring season. But here at the Georgia School Association I’m not prepared to do that now.”

That worst case scenario is exactly what Georgia High School athletes are worried about. Georgia athlete Daniel Martin started a petition on Change.org that can be found here, a petition that already has over 30,000 signatures that is simply titled, Do Not Cancel Spring High School Sports. Many athletes all across North Georgia and the rest of the state have signed this petition in an effort to perhaps have one last couple of practices and games together with their squad. For some kids, they are facing the reality that they may never get to throw another pitch again or run in another meet. A reality that some might not be able to come to terms with yet and maybe they won’t have to. With as much support as this petition is getting and with as many athletes that are speaking their minds on social media across the state it is going to be a really tough decision that the state is going to have to make, in regards to a full cancellation of the season.

One positive thing that can be taken away from all this is it’s good to see the kids standing up for themselves and saying that they understand that this is a situation that can’t be dealt with lightly, but they also need us to understand where they are coming from. Hopefully Dr. Robin Hines is a man of his word and will do everything in his power to do right by these kids.

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