Anonymous wrote:In fairness to Montgomery County, soccer's classification in the overall State Roadmap to Recovery has been a source of confusion. The State plan categorized activities as low risk, medium risk, and high risk. When many of us first read the plan, we assumed that for soccer, that would a continuum that would place team drills with distancing in the low risk category. Medium risk would include team based practice and intersquad scrimmaging, and the highest risk would be resumption of full competition.The highest risk category might start with local competition only and progress to tournaments with teams from different geographic areas.
This interpretation is consistent with the CDC guidelines (Considerations for Youth Sports).
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/youth-sports.html
Based on these recommendations, various leagues developed return to play plans.
But it was never clear how the phases for returning to play fit within the State guidelines. If you assume that in the State's Roadmap to Recovery, resumption for full play is a high risk activity, then games would not have started until the state is in Phase 3 of the recovery plan. The Governor's initial guidance for resumption of sports allowed for lower risk activities - socially distanced team training, as part of Phase 2 (or maybe even later in Phase 1 - I can't recall exactly).
Then, in mid-June, the Governor issued new guidance that basically allowed youth sports to return to normal. While the State is in Phase 2, youth sports seem to have no particular limit established at the State level.
https://commerce.maryland.gov/Documents/BusinessResource/Youth-Sports-COVID-19-Best-Practices.pdf
Of course buried in that guidance are qualifiers like "Individual groups or teams should not exceed the limit of the sports’ sanctioning organization. Group members and teams should limit mixing when possible (that is, try to avoid rearranging group members, even during scrimmages or games)."
I could be getting the timeline wrong, but I found all of this very confusing. It seemed like we went from "it's ok to resume socially distanced drills with the team" to "you can start playing full games" in a week or two.
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