Let Them Play rally at California state Capitol: ‘Sports was my life. Without it, I don’t have anything.’

Dozens of California high school athletes descended on the state Capitol Thursday morning to hand-deliver thousands of personal pleas to lift youth sports restrictions and allow them to return to the field for the first time since last spring.

Outside the Capitol, proponents of the Let Them Play CA movement gathered on the west-side steps to make their latest public case for a prompt return to play across the state. The rally and letter-writing campaign come following weeks of back-and-forth meetings between Gov. Gavin Newsom’s staff and return-to-play advocates that have yet to yield any results.

“We are here today to ask Gov. Newsom to lift the ban on youth sports and let them play,” said Brad Hensley, the co-founder of the Let Them Play advocacy group. “The reason we are here today and not next week or the week after is because time is of the essence.”

Hensley said they had collected over 10,000 emails, letters and signatures in the past five days. Behind a lectern on the Capitol steps, he was flanked by about two dozen local student-athletes holding hand-made signs in support.

Zelbee Radar, a volleyball player at Bella Vista High School outside Sacramento, could be seen with multiple signs, one that read “I can go to a strip club but I can’t play HS volleyball” and another that read, “Seniors deserve a season too.”

As the first student-athlete to speak at the rally, Radar said she dreamed of attending Oregon State, following in the footsteps of her sister, but said the school lost interest after she wasn’t allowed to play during the pandemic. That, she said, sent her into a spiral of depression that included “blacking out” from alcohol to suppress the pain — one of many student-athletes to turn to alcohol, drugs or worse in place of sports, coaches have said.

George Jackson, the football coach at Richmond High School, said his city has turned into the “wild, wild west” with kids who would normally be in school crisscrossing city road on dirt bikes and getting into trouble with the police.

A number of speakers, including Radar and fellow student-athlete CJ McMillan, a football and basketball player at Capital Christian, at times fought back tears as they delivered their message from behind the lectern.

“Sports was my life,” Radar said. “Without it, I don’t have anything.”

McMillan described leaving his family in York, Pennsylvania, two years ago to pursue football and academics at Capital Christian. He dreamed of attending Boise State and becoming the first in his family to go to college.

Since the pandemic hit, he and his team have traveled across state lines to play club football competitions, McMillan said.

“You have kids here crying because they want to get back outside with their friends and play. These kids are crying because they want to go to college. There’s a lot of kids who don’t have that same ability. Some kids are using sports to help save their lives,” Jackson said. “To keep them out of jail. … They are ending up in jail because they have nothing else to turn to.”

California’s position on youth sports became lonelier Wednesday when Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced new guidelines that would pave the return for all outdoor contact sports, including football, in some parts of the state. That came a week after teams in Western Washington got the green light to begin competition again.

In other states like Maine, Hawaii and Nevada, there will be no spring football season. In California, there has been no outright decision to cancel the season but the clock is ticking for counties to reduce case rates enough to get any kind of season in before the mandated drop-dead date of April 17.

Currently, nothing but purple-tier (outdoor, low-contact) sports are allowed in all but five sparsely populated counties in Northern California.

But organizers are hopeful they are making progress.

“It’s very fitting that we’re at the steps of the Capitol today because we also have the support of the state legislature,” Hensley said.

Return-to-play advocates had earned the bipartisan support of 37 state assembly members and 12 senators as of Sunday, said Ron Gladnick, the football coach at Torrey Pines High School in San Diego and a leader of the Golden State High School Football Coaches Community. They expected to eventually garner majorities in each chamber to sign on to a letter advocating for the return of youth sports.

Patrick Walsh, the football coach at Serra High School in San Mateo, turned toward the Capitol and said they were having daily meetings with officials who were inside those halls. The day started, Walsh later said on social media, on the phone again with Newsom aide Jim DeBoo.

However, not all legislators have been receptive. Gladnick called out a group of three state legislators who he said were “nonresponsive,” “tone-deaf” and “politically arrogant.”

Radar questioned the intentions of Newsom, who has continued to emphasize the importance of sports but has not committed to a more aggressive plan to get kids back on the field.

“We have a governor who says he wants sports to be back, calls himself an advocate for sports, yet where does he even show the support?” she said. “We haven’t even gotten the chance to prove we can play sports safely, the same way our government didn’t give small businesses the chance to prove they could impact safely.”