News that the city will require COVID-19 tests for all participants prior to indoor competitions for wrestling and ice-based sports like hockey and curling stunned those associated with the impacted sports.
Reactions ranged from disbelief to outrage to confusion to resignation.
Disbelief: “High school hockey won’t happen under this testing requirement. I don’t think families are willing to have their children tested that much,” Dimond High coach Dennis Sorenson said.
Outrage: “It seems absolutely unreasonable and an infringement on our rights,” longtime hockey official Louis Imbriani said.
Confusion: “I’m a little nervous how it will get done. There’s a lot of moving parts in asking every competitor, coach and official to be tested before every competition,” South High wrestling coach Randy Hanson said.
Resignation: “I’m going to do whatever I can to get my kids back on the ice. Kids need sports,” said Heather Greenough, the mother two hockey-playing boys.
The testing requirement, part of the city’s most recent emergency order, goes into effect Monday.
The emergency order lifts the ban on indoor competitions in Anchorage, although competitions are limited to teams and athletes from within the municipality.
For wrestling and ice-based sports — hockey, curling, figure skating and speedskating — COVID-19 tests are required no more than 72 hours before a competition. The requirement applies to athletes, coaches, officials and any other participants.
Vaccinated participants are not exempt, but those diagnosed with COVID-19 within 90 days of the competition can be exempt under specific circumstances described in Attachment E of the emergency order.
“I’m more angry than dumbstruck,” said Sorenson, a teacher at Mears Middle School. “I’m back in my middle school already, teaching face-to-face and working with kids every day in school, yet we can’t play a hockey game?
“I just think they’re trying to restrict hockey. It doesn’t make sense.”
Kids don’t have to be tested in order to return to school, Sorenson noted. And there are no testing requirements for other indoor sports that put players in close contact, like basketball, which resumes competition Tuesday in the Anchorage School District.
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Questions about the testing policy emailed to city officials Friday afternoon had not been answered as of Saturday evening.
Sorenson and Imbriani contend there is no scientific proof indoor hockey puts people at higher risk than other indoor sports.
“When I asked the city for it, they sent me a bunch of newspaper articles with speculation, whereas USA Hockey has done a study,” Imbriani said.
He thinks the sport is being targeted at least in part because of cases linked to an October hockey tournament in Anchorage. He said participants who caught the virus were spending time with each other away from the arena and doesn’t think the tournament spread the disease.
“If it spread at the tournament, how come no referees got sick?” he said.
Imbriani, an Alaska Hockey Officials member, said 70 officials worked games during the month of November — before the ban on indoor competitions — “and not a single one got COVID.”
“I reffed 63 games myself in the month of November, and I didn’t get sick,” he said.
Indoor youth hockey games are happening elsewhere in Alaska, including the Valley and the Kenai Peninsula, and teams from Anchorage are frequently traveling to those places. Imbriani said he won’t work games in Anchorage as long as the testing requirement is in place.
“I’ll continue to drive out to the Valley,” he said.
Greenough has two sons, ages 14 and 9, who play hockey, and she said teams and leagues in Anchorage are following mitigation policies at practices, which have been allowed in recent weeks.
“We’re following the rules,” she said. “We want our kids back in the rink, back on the field, back on the track. We want these kids playing sports. Unfortunately they are singling us out.”
She said she and her children have been tested multiple times, always with negative results. They have traveled frequently for hockey, sometimes to the Lower 48 and frequently to the Valley or the Kenai Peninsula.
Greenough said her family will do what they have to do to keep playing, even though she’s bewildered by the testing requirements.
The city mandate says if test results haven’t come back by the day of a competition, a same-day rapid antigen test can be used instead. It also says weekly antigen tests are acceptable “when conducted not more than 24 hours prior to competition and with a minimum of two weekly antigen tests required prior to first competition.”
“And rapid tests aren’t accurate, at least not 100%,” Greenough said.
The number of tests required could be staggering. Some athletes might need two tests in one week if they have two competitions more than 72 hours apart -- for example, a dual wrestling meet on Tuesday and a tournament on the weekend.
Hockey teams generally dress 20 players who would need to be tested, and many others will need tests too, Sorenson said.
“Managers, coaches, cheerleaders, referees, scorekeepers,” he said. “They may all have to do it on their own, maybe go to one of the free (testing) locations and then sit on pins and needles to see if all the tests come back on time.
“It’s a logistical nightmare. And I don’t think you should do mandatory testing of athletes when you’re not testing schoolchildren.”
Hanson, the South High coach, said he’s happy the city opened the door for local wrestling meets but he’s uncertain how the testing will work out.
College teams are doing in-house testing weekly and sometimes daily, he said, but high school programs will have to rely on parents taking the time to get their kids tested.
“It feels like it’s going to be hard to manage. I don’t think it’s impossible, but I think it’s going to be difficult,” he said.
Anchorage wrestlers have traveled to four out-of-state tournaments since last spring, Hanson said, and none of those competitions required COVID-19 testing.
“Just the normal health questionnaire and temperature checks at some but not all,” he said. “We haven’t had an issue, so it feels like wrestling and the ice sports (are) getting singled out.”
Social distancing is impossible in a sport like wrestling, he said, and wrestling is one of a few sports exempted from the city’s requirement that athletes wear face masks, even while competing.
“The kids need (sports) — it’s just one of those things,” he said. “There’s risk, and you have to weigh them. I grew up in Bethel, and we’d hop on a little Bush plane every weekend to travel to a nearby village. That’s a risk too.”