If the tournaments can be hosted safely, let the kids play

The Alaska Schools Activities Association recently announced the plan to move forward with the prep state basketball championships, and the Mat-Su Borough School District agreed to host the tourneys at local schools.

But there are conditions.

Masks will be worn by everyone in the facility. Spectators, staff, coaches, officials, and athletes, including those playing the game. Everyone.

There will be strict rules regarding attendance. All of the details have not been released, but the attendance guidelines are expected to be similar to what is currently in place in the district. Right now, for high school basketball in the district, attendance is capped at 25 percent of the facility’s capacity. The district has also used a system with wristbands. Teams have a set number of wristbands per game to distribute. Additional tickets are not available.

No wristband, no entry.

ASAA has built the March Madness Alaska brand over the last 20 years, hosting four classes of tournaments — 1A through 4A — over consecutive long weekends. The Alaska Airlines Center on the UAA campus has been the home of the tournaments for the last several years. Fans could spend 12 hours a day watching Alaska’s best high school basketball if they wanted to.

That obviously won’t be the case this year.

The tournaments will be spread across multiple district schools and the attendance restrictions won’t allow fans to catch any games they want.

Those are a lot of conditions.

But, assuming it all goes as planned, the kids will get to play.

That didn’t happen last year.

About two weeks before the start of the 2020 state tournaments, we were all heading straight into a global pandemic. There were so many questions, no answers and so much was unknown. Coronavirus was still a relatively new thing, especially in Alaska. We had no idea what the next several months or even year would look like. There was plenty of speculation and statistical models predicting how fast this virus would spread.

We went from the excitement of the all-Valley matchups during the first weekend of March and the anticipation of the region tournaments to an abrupt end of the 2019-2020 prep basketball season. There was no opportunity to play for a title or a spot in state. There was no closure, especially for the seniors. Careers ended weeks short.

That was the hardest part, in terms of sports. Players and coaches sometimes invest years of effort in pursuit of their athletic goals. You don’t want it to end, especially early.

The most important thing is to keep people safe and healthy. But if there is a responsible way to host these tournaments, let the kids play. The conditions are far from ideal. Nobody wants a mask mandate or attendance restrictions. But if that is what we have to do to actually have state tournaments this year, that has to be done. I’ve always said the most important things about involvement in sports are the life lessons learned along the way. You have to adjust and adapt to succeed in whatever sport you are part of.

If basketball players, coaches and fans want a state tournament, we all have to adjust and adapt.

Contact Frontiersman managing editor Jeremiah Bartz at editor@frontiersman.com.