Sports are a cornerstone of the American high school experience. And while Texas may be best known for those Friday night lights, students across the state participate in all sorts of athletics — swimming, tennis, golf, wrestling, soccer, volleyball, you name it.
When schools were disrupted by COVID-19, so were those high school sports teams.
It’s been about five years since students transitioned to learning at home during the height of the pandemic. What changes to school sports are still with us?
Greg Riddle, who covers high school sports for the Dallas Morning News, said one big difference is that the state’s University Interscholastic League, or UIL, now allows more summer training.
“The biggest change was allowing more summer strength and conditioning programs, and extra sports-specific instruction for athletes. And it’s really been a big benefit for the athletes, just because they’re getting more time to work out and to spend with their coaches,” Riddle said. “But I’ve had coaches tell me that it’s almost doubled their workload. And they were already stretched pretty thin with just the regular duties.”
Another change happened concurrently to the pandemic but was not necessarily a direct result of the virus, Riddle said.
“Colleges aren’t recruiting high school athletes as much anymore,” he said. “It’s a trickle down effect because the transfer portal has become so important at the college level, and colleges are going there first and then whatever scholarships they have left over, they are recruiting high school kids for those.
High school kids also are having to deal with the fact that they’re now getting recruited by lower-level schools and the Division One offers aren’t as prevalent as they were before COVID.”
Even though the students who were in high school at the start of the pandemic have all graduated, Riddle said the after effects of the shutdown is still an issue.
“I’ve had coaches tell me that just social media in general has played a big influence, kids are so used to spending so much time on their phones, that maybe they aren’t as in tune to what’s going on (around them),” he said. “I had one coach tell me that it’s led to more mental health challenges and stuff like that. Their phones and social media was basically all what they had during COVID.”
Riddle said these changes haven’t necessarily translated into lower-quality play on the field — especially given the extra training that’s allowed. However, he said despite this, turnout for games hasn’t bounced back across the board.
“The attendance at football state championship games for UIL has gone down every year since COVID,” he said. “And part of that is because the UIL will start allowing games to be streamed on Friday nights, and that started during COVID. Originally it was just going to be a temporary thing, and then they decided to make it a permanent thing, so you’re seeing a lot less fans actually going out to games.”
