cheryl
Administrator
Staff member
The Fight Over the Future of Football Has Become a Battle for California’s Soul - The Ringer
California has long been known as a hotbed of football talent. Yet as research into the game’s dangers has spread, politicians, advocates, and parents have clashed over how to protect youth, high school, and college athletes. What happens to a state intractably divided by sport?
n a brilliant October afternoon in San Francisco, a high school football coach named Danny Chan watched as his varsity offense ran sets against a phantom defense composed of a couple players brandishing tackling dummies. “We’re a fringe program,” said Chan, the head coach at Lowell High, which is widely viewed as the most academically rigorous public secondary school in the city. The visuals from that day backed Chan’s contention: Gatorade bottles were stacked haphazardly in a shopping cart used to transport them to the practice field, and the varsity players took turns in the compact shed that serves as a weight room.
While the members of Lowell’s freshman-sophomore team practiced at one end of the field, Chan coached the smaller cluster of varsity players at the other. Altogether, Lowell’s varsity roster numbered 18 players, including a pair of girls, which meant offensive reps against a full defense were a luxury he could no longer afford. This shabby survivalist approach has been the reality at Lowell for decades, ever since Chan himself played football here in the late 1980s. Sometimes when Chan meets Lowell alumni and tells them he’s the school’s varsity football coach, they seem surprised that their alma mater even has a football team.
California has long been known as a hotbed of football talent. Yet as research into the game’s dangers has spread, politicians, advocates, and parents have clashed over how to protect youth, high school, and college athletes. What happens to a state intractably divided by sport?
n a brilliant October afternoon in San Francisco, a high school football coach named Danny Chan watched as his varsity offense ran sets against a phantom defense composed of a couple players brandishing tackling dummies. “We’re a fringe program,” said Chan, the head coach at Lowell High, which is widely viewed as the most academically rigorous public secondary school in the city. The visuals from that day backed Chan’s contention: Gatorade bottles were stacked haphazardly in a shopping cart used to transport them to the practice field, and the varsity players took turns in the compact shed that serves as a weight room.
While the members of Lowell’s freshman-sophomore team practiced at one end of the field, Chan coached the smaller cluster of varsity players at the other. Altogether, Lowell’s varsity roster numbered 18 players, including a pair of girls, which meant offensive reps against a full defense were a luxury he could no longer afford. This shabby survivalist approach has been the reality at Lowell for decades, ever since Chan himself played football here in the late 1980s. Sometimes when Chan meets Lowell alumni and tells them he’s the school’s varsity football coach, they seem surprised that their alma mater even has a football team.