A group of NC high school athletes plan a protest next week to save their season
Two Myers Park High School football players are organizing a peaceful protest, scheduled for Wednesday at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Central Office Building.
K’Daron Redfearn and Tahj El said their message is simple: They don’t want CMS to cancel high school athletics.
“We’re doing it to give our side of the story,” El said Friday. “We want them to understand where we’re coming from.”
Mustangs football coach Scott Chadwick declined comment for this story, saying he wanted to talk to his players first.
El said the protest will be Wednesday, July 22, at 10:30 a.m. at the CMS Central Office Building on Stuart Andrew Boulevard. He’s encouraging all student-athletes who come to wear a mask and school colors. He said he expects players from multiple schools and multiple sports to come.
“They haven’t said we aren’t going to play, yet,” El said, “but we need to stress the reasons we do need to play. Maybe it’ll give them more ideas. Right now, the possibility of canceling the season is still in the cards. I feel if we can protest and spread our voices, they’ll open up to our ideas.”
After canceling spring sports and the 2020 state basketball championships, the N.C. High School Athletic Association allowed its more than 400 teams to resume summer workouts on June 15, provided the local school district was OK with it. Que Tucker, the commissioner of the NCHSAA, said the association found four reported cases of COVID-19 since workouts began, which were all traced to have originated away from the school setting.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg, like several other large districts, decided to wait to start summer workouts until July 6. CMS later postponed a return indefinitely.
This week, the NCHSAA announced that it was moving back the start of fall sports practice from Aug. 1 to Sept. 1.
That will, at least, cost Myers Park three football games, and El worries that after CMS announced it was going to remote learning this fall — as it did last spring — that it could cost him his senior season.
“We want to understand why we aren’t (in summer workouts),” El said. “We have other counties playing football, and I’ve been to plenty of basketball tournaments and there have not been people wearing masks. And I’ve seen other counties and colleges offer (summer workouts). I just think if we can give them an idea of why we want our season back, and how we can maintain the spread of the virus, that can be eye-opening for them.”
In The Charlotte Observer’s coverage area in North Carolina, 13 counties have started summer workouts. Six have not, including Mecklenburg County.
Gaston County is scheduled to begin Monday. Cabarrus County announced Thursday that it was pushing back the start of summer workouts until Aug. 10.
Schools are currently in Phase 1 of a three-phased return to sports, mandated by the NCHSAA. Phase 1 allows for noncontact workouts no longer than 90 minutes. There can be no more than 25 people, total, during outdoor workouts and 10 total for indoors, including coaches and trainers. Athletes also work in “pods,” so they are with the same group daily.
The NCHSAA has not announced when the final two phases will begin or what they will entail.
El said a Phase 1 workout option in Mecklenburg County, regardless of whatever else happens, would be a positive step right now.
“They said June 15, then July 6, they kept pushing the date back,” El said, “and other schools are out here practicing. Like Weddington is having summer workouts and bonding with their team. Especially in a time like this, with all that’s going on in this world, us as teammates, we need to be there for each other, especially at my school where we have so much diversity on our team. And this more than us us being football players. It’s a learning experience for every team.”
This story was originally published July 17, 2020 at 3:41 PM.
