Coaches, athletes, parents speak out on MCPS cancellation of fall & winter sports

Montgomery County Public Schools announced Tuesday that all sports for fall and winter have been cancelled, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The announcement was one line in a larger announcement that no on-site instruction will take place in MCPS for the fall semester. Many coaches and athletes' reactions ranged from resigned disappointment to devastation and anger.

One common theme among those opposed to cancelling sports was to question why fall and winter sports could not be either postponed or rescheduled for a different part of the school year, rather than have a lost season. Randy Thompson, head coach for the Richard Montgomery High School varsity football team, summed up these matters - and the short-shrift the sports decision was given in the MCPS statement - in one tweet.

"The announcement from MCPS to cancel fall and winter sports instead of to postpone and reevaluate, seems unjust to our student athletes, certainly given the fashion in which it passed over in a single sentence," Thompson tweeted. "Why not [reevaluate] 1 month from now, two months from now?," tweeted Quince Orchard High School head football coach John Kelley.

An online petition has been started to play fall and winter sports in the spring. At the same time, some MCPS parents expressed relief at the announcement, believing that having students gathering for practices and games would have put the larger community at risk for Covid-19 transmission.

Thompson, Albert Einstein High School football defensive coordinator Joe Bruneel, and other MCPS coaches vowed to do what they could to salvage some benefit for their student athletes this coming school year. Bruneel proposed football coaches across the system organize for a spring football season. Thompson said he would try to get his players on film to showcase their talents for colleges.