LYNN — The Lynn School Committee athletic subcommittee continued to voice its support for finding a way to play winter sports during a virtual meeting Thursday evening, with School Committee member Brian Castellanos leading the charge.
Castellanos made a motion to authorize Superintendent Patrick Tutwiler to ask the Lynn Board of Health to revisit its decision regarding the 2020-2021 winter athletic season following the winter break, once the city’s COVID-19 data from December is received and once it has had time to review the safety protocols put forth by the public school athletic directors.
“I’ve been contacted by numerous student-athletes, coaches and parents over the past week, and it’s really been hard for them to find out that the season has been canceled,” said Castellanos. “I want to say that I respect our Public Health director and the department, and I understand the tremendous impact that the virus has had across the board. But I do not agree with the decision to cancel winter sports because of the process that occurred. We can’t just shut down, we need to slow down and take another look.”
School Committee member Michael Satterwhite noted early in the meeting that it was not the School Committee that turned down winter sports, but the Board of Health. Satterwhite said that he is in favor of finding a way to play in the future.
“We did not vote to cancel winter sports, that’s not something the School Committee did,” said Satterwhite. “The Board of Health, not based off of our opinion, but someone outside of a political position looked at the data and made the determination that at this point, winter sports would not be a good thing to do.”
Many athletic subcommittee members voiced their support for taking a delayed approach to deciding on winter sports.
“We’ve heard from a tremendous number of people from the athletic community, and we really appreciate that,” said School Committee member Jared Nicholson. “I’ve always been a huge advocate for athletics in Lynn and I know that, particularly at a time like this, it gives students a chance to come together and a chance to hope. I think there may have been some pressure to make a decision based on the fact that the season was about to begin, but can we pause on the idea of canceling the season outright and ask for an opportunity to review specific proposals about what athletics would look like in the coming weeks.”
“I’m in full agreement with having some kind of winter sports,” said School Committee member Lorraine Gately. “But the director (of the Lynn Board of Health) did not just all of a sudden come up with numbers and say we’re going to cancel winter sports. If she didn’t deem it necessary, she wouldn’t have done it. But I’m very willing to wait until after December and see how things look as we go into January and potentially have a shortened season.”
“I support what Member Castellanos has put on the table, which feels to me like leaving the door open and keeping our options open to have another conversation,” said Tutwiler. “The Board of Health has spoken and I think we have to listen. We’re in the midst of a surge and we need to respect that, but that doesn’t mean that we have to close it out all together.”
Both Tutwiler and Lynn Mayor Thomas McGee noted the number of positive cases among Lynn high school students during the meeting telling the subcommittee that since Nov. 13, there have been roughly 100 high school students who have contracted COVID-19, with 25 cases coming in the last week.
But perhaps the most eye-popping statistics came from McGee, when he noted the amount of total cases in all of the other Northeastern Conference towns. McGee gave totals for Beverly (1,160), Danvers (1,177), Gloucester (555), Marblehead (422), Peabody (2,231), Saugus (1,311), Salem (1,615), Swampscott (297) and Winthrop (872). He then noted the total number of cases for Lynn, which stood at 8,958.
But even in light of those numbers, the consensus among the subcommittee members was to push off a decision until after winter break when the COVID-19 numbers have had a chance to fall.
Castellanos also pushed to allow the student-athletes and coaches to be involved in the process going forward and to show support for those who have been most affected by this decision.
“I think the decision to just cancel sports right away really caused a lot of harm emotionally right off the bat, and I think that’s something that we really need to take into consideration,” said Castellanos. “We can’t just keep people in suspense, and I think we have to include our constituents in this process as much as we can.”
The next step in the process will be to wait for the December COVID-19 data to be released in early January. Lynn athletic directors will then present their plans on how to conduct a safe winter season. If the Board of Health reverses course, it would allow the School Committee to hold a vote on whether to play winter sports.
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