To me as well as, i'm sure, every other youth coach out there, nothing is more important than player safety. I am sure that many of them, as well as many other people around the world, we are in a desperate search for information. Regardless of the side of the political spectrum that you are on. Regardless of your views on this virus and how it is being dealt with in your area of the world, one thing unites us all. We ALL just want to make sure that we are safe the people we love are safe. I am NOT a health official. I am NOT a politician. I am a coach. I won't give you my opinion either way on this topic because I truly believe that each of us has a right to feel the way we do about it based on our own situation and the situation of the people around us. Everyone's feeling on this matter is valid regardless of what it is. The purpose of this post is NOT to try to sway you one way or another. The purpose of this post is to try to help my fellow coaches, players, and club directors to find information to help us each to make as informed a decision as possible regarding how we operate coming out of quarantine.
This morning I sat in on two different calls. The first was a Zoom call hosted by The Aspen Institute where Dr Jill Daugherty (CDC), Dr Johnathan Finnoff (Chief Medical Officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee), and Lauren Sauer (Office Of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, Johns Hopkins Medicine) were the panelists. They weighed in on how sports should approach reopening their respective sports responsibly along with trying to help give some guidelines these sports should follow. They talked about everything from insurance and liability to sterilization and precautions to put in place. That panel discussion can be heard at the following link. That link also has a risk analysis tool suggested by The Aspen Institute.
The second call I got on this morning was a webinar hosted by JVA where club directors at different beach volleyball clubs around the country got on and discussed sport specific instructions as to how to open beach volleyball clubs safely. These directors talked about everything from ideas on how to physically distance as much as possible all the way down to how to sanitize equipment. One director suggested using a product called Bioprotect to help with equipment. The link for that product information is here.
Like I said, I am NOT a medical professional. I do not understand the science behind the product I listed, nor do I in ANY way, shape, or form, think that there is a way to be 100% sure that the precautions anyone takes will be 100% effective. I just want to help to point people in the direction of information as I would hope that others would help me to find if i were in search of ways to help other human beings. I hope you find some of it useful!
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