Based on feedback we’ve been getting from our sources in the high-school-sports world, Arlington Public Schools has become something of a punching-bag of ridicule for its ongoing policy of requiring student-athletes to wear masks even in situations where it not only serves no good, but well could prove to be counterproductive from a health standpoint.
The most heaping helping of abuse being directed at Arlington comes from the region’s big brother, Fairfax County, which has, shall we say, a more common-sense approach to mask-wearing among athletes. Lordy, when even Fairfax County looks sane by comparison, you know how bad it’s gotten.
(What perhaps most irks Fairfax is that, in order to play Arlington teams in Arlington, Fairfax players wear masks – apparently out of courtesy to their hosts rather than some hard-and-fast requirement imposed by A-town.
But when Arlington teams go to Fairfax venues, Fairfax players are generally mask-less while Arlington students are required by their own administrators to mask up. Does that make any sense to you?)
Obviously, Arlington’s policy is a joke. It doesn’t “follow the science” – it’s just another example of Arlington Public Schools’ skittishness and virtue-signaling when it comes to just about everything, including school athletics. It is like we have entered a parallel universe and cannot get back home to Reality-ville.
Most Arlington coaches not only have heard the ridicule, they agree it’s warranted. Not that they’d speak up in public, however; they live in terror of [cheesing] off the higher-ups, as public schools are top-down autocracies where any form of dissent is rooted out mercilessly.
But behind the scenes, they still regale us with how stupid it all is.