Athletes attending schools in the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) have been given permission to continue playing sports and scheduling competitions with other schools.
The district had suspended athletics on campus back in December because of a rising number of coronavirus cases in the county. Santa Ana was one of the communities in the area that was hit the hardest. For a time, the only sport that was having competitions in Orange County was cross country running. The restrictions were brought on by the fact that the county was still in the state’s most restrictive tier and officials needed to improve the situation.
Fermin Leal, the district’s spokesman, said that each campus will be given the freedom to plan how it will resume sports training and its competition schedule. The news was received well by head coaches at several of the schools in the districts, many of whom had doubts over whether there would be a sports season at all this year. Banner printing is a common feature at competitive sports games.
Basketball is one sport that is still not allowed. The California Department of Public Health put out a youth sports guideline stating that the county has to be in the yellow tier before it can play competitive basketball games. The county will be in this tier when it records less than one new case per 100,000 people.
