In Response to the Sports Boosters’ Letter
In Response to the Sports Boosters’ Letter:
We need to take a moment to address our privilege—our privilege as a town relatively immune to the devastating effects of the COVID-19 virus; our privilege as a school district with considerable resources; our privilege as a people with freedoms both financial and political.
This is the privilege that allows members of our community to sue the State Government for the wearing of masks in school, that allows them to pen letters such as the one below.
There is a definite, scientific reason for the “High-Risk” categorization of basketball as a sport. Unlike fall sports, ones that our students were lucky enough to play, basketball necessitates almost constant physical closeness, therefore increasing transmissibility of the virus tenfold. While your citations are true, children are at a lower risk for infection and transmission of the virus, that does not negate it, nor exempt you or them from the moral and societal responsibility during a PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS. After all, to use your language, “student” comes before “athlete;” these student-athletes will still be attending school, potentially putting other classmates and staff at risk.
You speak of disenfranchisement, as if your rights or privileges have ever truly been withheld from you as an American citizen and racial majority. I would posit that “disenfranchisement” is much too strong a word in this case, perhaps we could term as a great inconvenience or a major frustration, one that has workable solutions, that in the long run serves to contribute to the greater good and, indeed, has an end in sight.
There are injustices in this world, even on as small a scale as Cattaraugus County. Perhaps we could talk about how, at one point, the only documented COVID deaths were Native American. Or maybe, we could address that, according to the Census Bureau, 17 percent of our county’s residents live in poverty (that’s around 13,000 people) and have been severely impacted by the pandemic.
I just wonder why teenage basketball is that for which you choose to fight, when you have small-town power and sway that would accomplish you much bigger and more impactful changes. I am well-aware of the detriments on mental health a lack of routine and interpersonal interaction inflicts on students, on all people. We are hurting; we are in dark places. Student-athletes are no more important than Ellicottville’s non-athlete students, teachers, or staff, why paint them as such?
The use of a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote was particularly tasteless, as if your ephemeral plight is anywhere close to the ongoing fight for racial equality in the United States. I cannot begin to describe my “extreme concern and dismay” at the lack of foresight and patience demonstrated by the authors of this letter.
If saving the students is your goal, to provide opportunities for limited-income students who are truly suffering, then there are countless inventive and safe methods just waiting for you to try. Again, we are all on the same page—lives have been changed and destroyed; nothing is simple or easy; parts of us have been crushed, lost, and torn to shreds. You act as if it is just you and your children’s lives that matter here, that interscholastic sports do not necessitate travel, that Ellicottville is an impenetrable bubble of health and safety. That’s fallacious—indicative of a general selfishness and disregard for others. You are fighting tooth and nail for a suboptimal solution, a quick fix. We all must wait, not just you. What gives you the right to wait less?
-Louisa Benatovich,
Great Valley Resident; ECS Class of 2019
UPDATE: The original letter posted by the Sports Boosters has since been taken down.