OSSAA vows to move forward after disappointing pandemic vote

David Jackson was hopeful during a phone conversation this week. That ranks among the greatest feats of his 24-year career with the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association, the last four he has spent as executive director.

“We’re going to make the best of this situation,” he said. “We’re going to continue to encourage schools to stay safe. We’re not going to let a setback stop us from doing what we’re supposed to be doing.”

The setback being one of the most discouraging moments in OSSAA history, last Friday’s OSSAA board of directors vote against a proposal that would have phased in a return of Oklahoma high school athletes to activities amid the pandemic.

Jackson said his office spent two weeks doing nothing but consulting with organizations ranging from the CDC to the state health department to the National Federation of State High School Association’s Sports Medicine Advisory Committee. What resulted was a three-phase plan similar to the ones NCAA universities are rolling out to return their athletes to on-campus activities as safely as possible.

The OSSAA board voted down the plan 7-6, basically across regional lines.

Three of the seven “no” votes were from board members representing counties that, according to Oklahoma State Department of Health data, have had a combined 17 cases and zero fatalities from COVID-19. They deemed Phase 1 of the plan, heavy on one-on-one interaction between coaches and players and heavier on health, sanitation and social distancing measures, too restrictive.

Three of the six “yes” votes were from Tulsa and Oklahoma County representatives. Their experience with COVID-19 has been far more severe, and their vote reflected a far more cautious approach.

In any event, majority ruled. The proposal failed. Oklahoma schools were left to their own governance, and to welcome back athletes to team settings without “phase” dates if they so chose.

Jackson was left to answer a question: Isn’t one man’s “restrictive” another’s “sensible?”

“Well, we thought so,” he said. “We wanted to try to put the best plan together that we thought made sense and gave us that best opportunity to get to the fall and have fall activities.”

Now Jackson must worry about the safety of kids in districts that rush team activities, and a domino effect whereby one district taking precautions hears about a rival getting back to work and now the pressure ramps up for that district to get back to work as well.

Thanks to what happened last Friday, Jackson must worry more about the pandemic’s toll on the health of his membership in a literal and figurative sense.

Oklahoma high school athletics was cracking well before COVID-19 arrived. Public schools fought private ones. Urban districts fought rural ones.

Superintendents and athletic directors seemed to haggle over everything from who’s going where for district assignments and who’s bringing what to the softball tournament’s hospitality room.

Now, after one of the OSSAA’s biggest moments of reckoning, where its board split over something as fundamental as a plan to assure the health and wellness of its kids as they return to play, how can anyone have any confidence in whatever cohesion remained?

“The strength of the membership of the OSSAA is in putting aside the things that make us different,” Jackson professed. “That despite being rural/urban, large school/small school, being able to put those things aside and providing the best form of activities that we can.

“Does (Friday’s division) concern me? It does some. But we’re going to work to make sure that those differences are minimal.”

I am certain Jackson will be earnest in those efforts, however impossible they seem.

He has already pivoted from the disappointment of Friday’s vote. What were designed to be rules for member schools to follow have become guidelines since the vote. The OSSAA is sharing those guidelines, which are more or less details of Phases 1, 2 and 3 in its proposed plan, and hoping districts implement them into whatever policies they adopt independently.

“I’m telling you, it started the minute we were finished with our board meeting,” Jackson said. “The emails and calls came in. ‘Can we have the plan? Can we use it?’”

Expect several districts surrounding the Tulsa metro to adopt OSSAA guidelines. Oklahoma City has indicated it will do so. Other metros and districts will no doubt do the same, but they still are on their own, ostensibly, as they move to reopen athletics.

It’s a shame. We still see team sports in unifying terms. The idea of individuals bonding for common goals and a greater good remains.

The pandemic has served as a catalyst to endanger those principals. It certainly became a divisive force in that OSSAA board vote.

“That’s not going to deter us,” Jackson asserted. “Getting to the fall and being able to have our fall activities is still our number one goal.”

So he moves forward in that pursuit. I respect his determination and his optimism.

It’s just such an obstructed road.