Parents of some high school athletes allowed to play their sports with few or no fans are not going down without a fight. Many are continuing to pressure local and state decision-makers over the Minnesota State High School League's restrictions that bar fans from indoor volleyball matches, and limit fans for high school football to 250. Those restrictions are the subject of a lawsuit filed earlier this week.
Steph Thorsen's daughter is a senior volleyball player in the Gibbon/Fairfax/Winthrop district. She says their gym can hold 2-thousand people, making social distancing entirely possible and thinks that fans should be allowed to watch her daughter play volleyball.
"We could be indoors in a mask, socially distanced watching these kids play ball inside. Which would be a little more consistent . We could crack open fire doors a little bit for ventilation, run fans in gyms, there's just a lot of different things that could be done that we feel aren't even being considered."
According to FOX 9, some players and their families have filed lawsuits against the MSHSL to allow fans in the stands. The lawsuit argues that the discrepancies between what the Minnesota Department of Health guidelines are and what the MSHSL is doing are too drastic. The lawsuit says that the MDH allows indoor gatherings of 25% of the buildings capacity not to exceed 250 people. The MSHSL won't allow any fans to watch indoor sports this fall.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz spoke with "The Morning News with Dave Lee" on Thursday morning about the topic and says that the MSHSL is trying to make a bad situation work.
"When it comes to schools, the high school leads got a tough position because our first responsibility is to our students and those student-athletes. Whatever we're doing, we know how valuable, I say this that Friday nights of the most precious times and the most precious memories I have, they're important. They're important to a student's development. But I think they're trying to figure out, and what we've seen is in so many cases, it's the community spread. It may not be the athletes themselves, just like so many times its folks coming into these, and so I think the High School league is going to take a look at that."
Walz continued saying that the MSHSL is trying to get it right and balancing between allowing people to watch student-athletes play and keeping everyone safe.
"They'll try and get some clarification, and the one thing is, when you see there's, you know, inconsistencies or whatever the representative said is the setting and the situation varies greatly, whether it's in a gym with volleyball or whether it's outside with football and I think, as we learn with COVID, we have to hit that sweet spot between what the health data says and what we can let people try and see their kids play. I'm excited that the high school league and we're going to try and help them the best we can. Just like we have hundreds of thousands of students back in school buildings. That's where they need to be. But we can't risk this and you saw it. I was actually watching and saw a little bit of this. Some of the college games that came back where they ended up clearing out SMU's entire student section because they simply didn't social distance or have masks on. So, they'll get this. They're working on it. I think some clarification will come out, and I know this as a parent, you know, seeing your children play is is an exciting thing, but we want to make sure that the experience for those kids is both enjoyable and safe."
