COVID-19 Update (September 7th)
Hello everyone,
We hope that you all have been doing well and that you and your families have all been staying healthy and safe during these unprecedented times. Below you will find the latest update on the state of our Fall 2020 season as well as the league as a whole.
After thoroughly reviewing all of the state and local guidelines that are currently in place and talking it over as a family, we have decided to postpone the start of our next season indefinitely. This decision is based on a number of factors, the first being the state of California’s new reopening plan that was announced on August 28th (i.e. the “Blueprint For A Safer Economy”). This new plan, which is a color coated system, currently has Orange County listed as a red or “substantial” county, which is the second most restrictive color/tier of this new system. While the state did release some interim youth sports guidelines a few weeks before this new system was announced, it is unclear whether or not these are still in affect, and even if they are, the guidelines are very limiting seeing that they only allow youth sports programs to run modified/non-contact practices and/or training sessions in small groups (i.e. six players or less for youth basketball), preferably outdoors where six feet of social distancing can be achieved, with all players and coaches wearing face coverings, and with no parents/spectators in attendance. It is unclear at this time when and if these guidelines will be modified, but given the announcement made by CIF (i.e. the California Interscholastic Federation) back in July that stated that all high school sports are officially postponed until mid-December (which is a timeline that they are already talking about pushing back), it is clear that we will not be able to run a league with full on games and practices where social distancing, face coverings, and/or other safety measures will not be required and where parents/family members will be allowed to attend these games/practices in the near future. While we were considering running a weekly skills clinic that followed the aforementioned youth sports guidelines in order to provide the players with some type of basketball activity to engage in for the time being, we decided that given the start-stop nature of this pandemic, we wouldn’t want to have all of you allocate your league fees towards a skills clinic that at any time could be postponed/canceled due to their being a spike in cases in the community (which in turn would lead to more restrictive guidelines being levied down by the state), or worse, due to a player, coach, and/or parent/family member contracting COVID-19, which would result in a temporary shut down of the league as well as multiple families being quarantined.
With that being said (and in relation to the last point addressed), the main reason that we have decided to postpone the season indefinitely is that we do not feel that it is safe to run the league at this time. From when we first postponed the league back in March when the stay-at-home order was initially put in place up until now, our number one priority has always been the health and safety of our players, their families, and the Orange County Shooting Stars community as a whole. The fact of the matter is that regardless of whatever safety measures we were to put in place and/or how much attention to detail we were to put into carrying out these measures in order to run the league, at this time an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 still exists in any public place where people are present. As a community organization, we have a responsibility to keep our community safe, and even though cases have been on the decline as of late, people are still getting sick every day, which means that in order for us to 100% ensure the safety of your players, your families, our coaches, and ourselves, we have no other choice in our opinion but to carry out this decision.
While all of this is very unfortunate and we hate to disappoint everyone who was looking forward to the season starting up, we want to reassure all of you that this is not the end of Orange County Shooting Stars. Although we are hesitant to set an official start date for our next season, we are hopeful that we will be able to return to the court in early-to-mid 2021. In the meantime, we will keep all of you on our email list so that you can receive any and all updates about when and if we are able to start back up again. We will also keep this website up so that all updates can be posted on here as well. In addition to that, we will continue to read and answer all emails sent to our current email address (ocshootingstars@gmail.com) and answer all phone calls and texts on our current phone number (714) 357-0315. As we mentioned in our last update, we have appreciated all of you being understanding during this time, and before we sign off, we want to say thank you to all of you who have supported our league over the years and who helped us build the league up to what it was before the pandemic hit. Once we are able to return, we are committed to providing all of your players with a fun and safe environment to learn and enjoy the game of basketball as well as what we expect to be one of our best if not our best season yet. We look forward to the day when the Orange County Shooting Stars community can come together in person again (both on and off of the court) as we have missed everyone very much during these times. Also, this probably goes without saying, but if they haven’t been doing so already, please make sure that your players are making use of this time to get outside and practice/work on their games! If you’re not sure what your player should be working on, please feel free to contact us at any time as we would be happy to send over some drills for them to do.
In closing, we want to remind you all that all of us are part of a very special community (whether in person or apart) that we are very proud of and that at the end of the day we are all in this together. If you have any questions, or if you just want to check in and say hello. please don’t hesitate to contact us. Stay safe, be well, and we will see you all in 2021. Thanks!
