COSLI Student Statement on CHSAA Decisions
To the Colorado High School Activities Association,
We, the students of Colorado Student Leaders Institute, are writing to you to express our unheard voices on how high school sports are being addressed during COVID-19. Many students who participate in COSLI, along with numerous student athletes from across the state, are negatively affected by your decision to modify sports seasons and rules in the face of the current pandemic. The voices of student athletes, families, districts, and especially rural communities went unheard during the decision making process in regard to scheduling the coming sport seasons, club teams, and extracurricular activities.
The sports modifications for COVID-19 have disrupted future aspirations, academic ambitions, and school engagements. Take student scholarships for athletics as an example. Sports scholarships allow student athletes to experience and explore opportunities that may otherwise be out of reach for them. By delaying multiple sports until the spring semester, this decision has potentially ruined, or significantly lessened, many students' opportunity of receiving a scholarship. Additionally, many students will be unable to participate in their usual sports because of overlapping seasons.
For example, the volleyball players of Colorado will be unable to play high school and club volleyball because of the stipulation by Rocky Mountain Volleyball that states students cannot simultaneously play in a high school league and a club league. With the current schedule, Colorado volleyball’s club league and high school season overlap, forcing athletes to choose between the two. Another sport similarly caught between club league and the high school season is boys soccer. This has left particular clubs unable to compete as some highschool athletes choose to prioritize their high school season over their club season.
The National Letter of Intent will be signed at least a month before many sports start for this year's season. This includes football, which doesn’t start until March 4th. Thirty-eight states will be playing football this fall. That’s asking college coaches and the National Collegiate Athletic Association to change their signing day to allow student athletes in 13 other states to have a chance for possible recruitment. While some student athletes can bypass this issue by transferring to a school in a different state for their fall sports season, many student athletes are unable to do so.
Rural districts across the state have already seen the difficulties this decision has caused. It has appeared to us that your board officers focus on the bigger schools, the majority, in the state of Colorado despite the fact that these decisions have statewide impact. This includes not only the larger schools upon which you focus, but also smaller, rural schools. The plan of action this year regarding scheduling for 2020-2021 sports seems to consider the needs of rural schools of little import, as the schedule was made without the consideration of rural necessities. By leaving out these members of the Colorado community, you have inadvertently caused strife between the student athletes of these schools and the association who is supposed to be their representation.
We understand that you consulted with high school coaches on your advisory board about your future plan of action on handling the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020-2021 sports season. We also acknowledge that the intent was to provide a safe, and enjoyable environment for all student athletes during these unprecedented times. We only wish that you had consulted us, the student voice of Colorado, so we could have provided vital perspectives during this decision making process.
What we ask of you now is crucial to the resolution of this ongoing problem; we wish to create a student athlete advisory board that is a part of CHSAA. This board would have students from all backgrounds and communities to best represent the entire state. We hope that in the future, student athletes will not be excluded from the essential decisions such as the sports schedule entering the 2020-2021 seasons.
Respectfully,
Colorado Student Leaders Institute
