Dear Governor Kate Brown,
Thank you for revising mask rules for Oregon high school track & field, tennis and golf. Please also add baseball to the list. The one-size-fits-all mask mandate in the state of Oregon for OSAA students competing in outdoor sports is not reasonable. As a mother of four children who compete in sports in the Portland Public School District, the current mask mandate for outdoor sports and vaccinated individuals is detrimental to the health and well-being of our children and Oregonians as a whole.
Last week my daughter and son, a high school senior and sophomore respectively, began a minimal amount of in-person learning only 2.5 hours a day, twice a week. My children were thrilled to be competing again in sports, and although my daughter could barely breathe as a masked distance runner, the opportunity for socialization out-weighted the cost of respiratory acidosis from competing in a mask.
Not two weeks into in-person school and my son’s Cleveland High School baseball season, the JV2 team was forced to quarantine for two weeks as a masked player on the opposing Grant High School baseball team tested Covid-positive. The fully masked Cleveland High School team could only have been in close contact with the Grant player for minutes at home plate or another base in the infield.
Why should students competing outdoors at social distance wear masks, or be subjected to the same quarantine guidelines as a student on the opposing team who tests positive for Covid-19? According to the CDC, you should ‘quarantine if you were within 6 feet of someone who has COVID-19 for a total of 15 minutes or more’. This clearly is not the case in high school baseball, where running the bases takes less than 15 minutes! According to this CDC guideline, close contact in baseball should pertain only to the team who spent time together in the dugout. Quarantining Cleveland’s entire JV2 high school team, per OSAA and state guidelines, with no in-person school and no sports seems a punishment for our youth who were outside in masks and not in close contact with the other player.
Thankfully my daughter can breathe distance running while my son, competing in sports for the first time in over a year, continues his ridiculous ‘online sentence’ without sports or socialization until May 6th. What will be the long-term social and mental health effects of ‘online socialization’ and quarantine on Oregon’s student population, as compared to states who have managed in-person learning and sports all year?
Our children deserve better! Governor Brown, please revise state mask mandates for outdoor sports, to include baseball, so that the state of Oregon and the OSAA align with CDC guidance. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Kristen Downs
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