With Covid-19 cases coming to a slow halt in Sonoma County, club sports at Sonoma State are slowly starting to be allowed to resume their regular activities. Although some activities can resume, clubs have to abide by certain covid guidelines that the school has put out. This past week, club sports officials have received an email from the Club Sports Advisor Michael Dominguez, with rules and guidelines for how they can return to play safely.

Some of the guidelines that are listed include, “… SSU faculty or staff members being present at all times during the event, masks being worn at all times, maintaining 6 ft. social distancing at all times, events staying within a 2-hour time limit, and individuals pre-registering to attend through Engage.”

With these new guidelines in place, club sports can finally resume in person activity, albeit safely, which is something they haven’t been able to do for over a year now. Dominguez touched on the importance of getting the students back out onto the field, saying, “I think our students have really missed this, and haven’t really been motivated to do much. We’ve encouraged Zoom workouts and things like that but students are pretty much “zoomed out” with classes and internships, and they just want to get back out and play the sport they love.”

In order to schedule an event on campus, students must first fill out an event request form on Engage. After the event gets approved they will then need to reserve an outdoor space through Conference and Event Services. Once the area is reserved and your request is approved you can create the event via Engage so other club members can sign up to join.

There are always going to be concerns about Covid-19 and the safety surrounding events such as practices, but Dominguez provided some reassurance on just how safe SSU’s guidelines are. “When it comes to COVID, everyone has their own level of concerns, some are very concerned and some are not concerned at all. We want to be open and understanding of where anyone is coming from,” he said. “We’re working with risk management to put a plan together on safely coming back to play. If people don’t feel safe of course we are not pushing anything on anybody. If you do come back, we have rules on masks and staying six feet apart and things like that. We are putting a lot of emphasis on the safety aspect of it because the last thing we want to do is get people back and get people sick and have the numbers trend in the wrong direction.”

Despite the new guidelines, not many clubs have signed up to host practices and conditioning sessions. “There haven’t been that many clubs,” Dominguez said. “For us, Men’s Lacrosse have been saying they want to get back and resume activities and there’s two or three that maybe want to be back but that’s it.”

Jack Reynolds, the President of the Men’s Ultimate Frisbee Club, was able to give some potential insight as to why some clubs might not be returning to play quite yet. “Unfortunately we are a smaller club, meaning we don’t have a large number of members,” he said. “Due to the current pandemic, many are not living in the area so we will most likely not be able to run any practices.”

Even though it may not be the right time for all of the club sports to return to play, the future is looking up for a return to a new sense of normalcy. Although it’s hard to predict exactly what will happen with the pandemic and the resulting guidelines, Dominguez was able to give a little bit of insight as to what the next steps may look like for clubs in the coming Fall semester.. “Hopefully we’ll be back to regular practices, for travel there’s gonna be some different stipulations. Are we gonna have a list of people being vaccinated, or have testing for traveling out of the area? Whatever we can do, if it’s something to help the students, let’s go for it,” Dominguez stated.

Although there is still some uncertainty with how things will look moving forward, things are trending in a positive direction for club sports at SSU. More updates will follow as new regulations are slowly being rolled out on campus.