Two New Jersey high school swimmers appeared on the Fox & Friends TV show to talk about their petition asking New Jersey’s governor to reopen pools.
Jerry Zheng and Andy Moss are high school sophomores who compete for Somerset Hills YMCA. They’ve launched a petition asking New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy to reopen pools to competitive swimmers, with about 6100 signatures so far.
“Our swimmers are disciplined enough to return to the pool safely and follow the guidelines outlined by USA Swimming,” Zheng said in the FOX interview, which you can see here.
Zheng and Moss lean heavily on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statement from March, which suggested that there was no evidence that the novel 2019 coronavirus could be spread through chlorinated water. The main risks, then, become person-to-person contact between people within a swimming pool. Clubs in other states have found some blueprints they say minimizes those risks, including keeping athletes to one per lane and having swimmers change and shower at home to avoid sharing locker rooms.
Zheng and Moss run through some of those guidelines, arguing that swimmers’ discipline in training proves they can stay disciplined in following social distancing guidelines if pools are reopened.
“Jerry and I have been competitive swimmers since we were 7,” Moss says. “This is our entire lives. Our mental and physical health has taken a toll.”
Let the kids in New Jersey get back to competition swimming.
If you let someone else make up the rules, you don’t have to. Rough comparison here but the smoking industry wrote the rules for many years. Not saying USA swimming is big tobacco but you can understand what I am saying.
Because USA Swimming has always upheld the highest moral and ethical standards in protecting their young athletes. Oh wait…
Nice job, guys! Two well-spoken young men.
They should take input from various sources and considering USA Swimming probably understands the behaviors of the sport it’s a good reference point.
Agreed. USA Swimming has no credibility, nor do they have any business telling anyone what to do. Not only did they, along with USA Gymnastics and other governing bodies, bungle the sexual abuse and pedophile coaches crises and then lie to congress, they spent millions of dollars of membership money attempting to cover their sorry rear ends. In the meantime, while clubs are on the verge of folding, I’m not aware of providing any financial assistance to hurting organizations except mental heath assistance. Maybe it’s time to dissolve the offshore member funded “insurance“ fund and put it back to the clubs and not towards the overpaid and out of touch staff in Colorado Springs.
USA Swimming did dissolve their offshore insurance company.
https://swimswam.com/usa-swimming-announces-new-5-million-keeping-athletes-first-action-plan/
USA Swimming has also announced $1 million in grants for clubs:
https://swimswam.com/usa-swimming-announces-1-million-in-grant-to-support-member-clubs/
One million for all the clubs is a joke. That’s like doing nothing.
Yeah, 1 million dollars is a joke. It took them two months after everything shut down to do anything. Not only that, have you seen how difficult it is to get some help from them. You basically have to be a team that runs their own facility because staff salaries do not meet their criteria for expenses. So for the majority of clubs they won’t get any help. There are LSCs giving out more than that to their clubs.
Did your club not take PPP money? If every USA Swimming club took their PPP money, that would be millions pumped into the sport.
I don’t have a strong opinion to share on that one way or the other; however, your comment was factually inaccurate, so I was addressing that.
I mean I definitely get why people wanna get back in the pool, I’m going stir crazy over here as well. I just don’t understand this narrative that we are victims of our local governments, and we should fight them to reopen. Jersey has had over 10,000 deaths in two months, 1,000 new cases daily. Children are at lower risk, but otherwise healthy kids who’ve contracted Covid-19 are experiencing heart damage, which could impact them for the rest of their lives https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/19/health/mis-c-coronavirus-children-doctors-immediate/index.html .
It’s probably not going to change anything, if you believe these restrictions are a waste of time you’ve probably made up your mind. But it would be in your best interest to take this seriously.
If you believe these restrictions are NOT a waste of time you’ve probably made up your mind. But it would be in your best interest to take this seriously.
That was weak
Kids with “suspected” Covid-“related” syndrome need immediate attention, doctors say
That’s your article??? Suspected and Covid related??? That’s the evidence you put forward?
It would be irresponsible to report anything as fact yet, given no official studies have looked into this. However, there are thousands of doctors around the country sharing early findings with each other so we can have advance on potential issues. This is one of those issues.
Swimmer A. Nonsense. That’s a red herring for CNN to keep their narrative alive. The flu is 20x as deadly as covid for this under the age of 18.
You repeated something similar in the Nitro Swimming article yesterday, but I haven’t been able to find how you reached that conclusion. Also, don’t kids usually have parents or something? Like anyone in their lives they come in contact with who are at higher risk than they are?
Yeah, but COVID can be deadly to the adults that will be taking care of the facility and coaching the kids. The point isn’t just to protect the kids, it’s to protect everyone and not have early April happen all over again. New Jersey hospitals were hit hard and thousands died! It really sucks, but kids can wait a little longer before going back to practice.
They did an awesome job and seem like really good kids. Viewers couldn’t help but feel for their plight.
Plight is a bit of a strong word. I feel for the plight of doctors and nurses in New York hospitals that saw some intense stuff a month ago, or the plight of Amazon workers that were screwed over with no PPE and rampant COVID in their warehouses. This is more of a bummer but they’ll get to swim again. I think Gov. Murphy needs to prioritize a few other things before opening up public athletic facilities. I think these kids and their parents should know that.