California youth sports on pause as Newsom halts plan to restart play

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday there was a plan in place to restart youth sports, but he halted the reboot as coronavirus numbers spike in California. The announcement came shortly after the state moved all of the counties in the Sacramento region into the purple tier of the state’s COVID-19 reopening guidelines.

With Newsom cracking down in an effort to squelch the spike in coronavirus, youth sports programs are left to sit on the sidelines. In his Monday news conference, Newsom pointed out he was an athlete himself, playing baseball at Santa Clara University.

“(I have) a lot of friends with kids very, very active in clubs ports that have been very frustrated by this entire experience,” Newsom said. “It’s incredibly important that we do our physical activities safely.”

Newsom said a club baseball team traveled to Arizona to play in a tournament. Some players, coaches and parents became sick with the coronavirus during the trip, he said.

California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly said the time is not right to allow youth sports to play games. The state added more than 8,800 new cases of COVID-19 Sunday.

“The timing right now with case rates going up very quickly, timing is everything with this. We want to make sure as we move forward with something as important as youth sports, we do it with eyes in front of us and hoping we set it up for success,” Ghaly said.

Newsom said Monday he had a plan in place to restart youth sports, but he shelved the ideas as the state’s infection numbers spiked.

“We have the guidelines, we built the parameters and put a lot of work into this,” he said.

This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 1:47 PM with the headline "California youth sports on pause as Newsom halts plan to restart play."