‘We’re trying to stay ready,’ says Portola’s Peter Abe as football coaches and players wait

Head Coach Peter Abe led Portola to the Pacific Coast League title in 2019. (File photo: Fernando M. Donado, For OC Sports Zone)

Portola High School athletic director and head football coach Peter Abe has been paying close attention to the movement and efforts by fellow coaches and administrators to help start high school football this school year.

As a former Irvine High star running back, Abe is well aware of the value of high school sports and what athletes are going through as they await a decision on the future of the sport, which was originally scheduled to start in August, then pushed to January.

There is no clear-cut word on whether it will start as proposed by the CIF in March.

But Abe and other coaches had some reason for optimism this week after the National Federation of State High School Associations announced new guidelines on the affect of the coronavirus relating to high school sports.

Among the observations, the advisory group said that “prevailing community infection rates appear to be the strongest predictor for high school athletes being infected and proven cases of direct transmission of coronavirus in the athletic setting remain relatively rare.”

“That’s how things usually work, you get things done at the federal level and it usually trickles down to the states and now it’s just a matter of time of how fast it’s going to trickle,” Abe said.

“But there have been some really key coaching organizations that have been helping to make sure that the powers that be at the state and the county level kind of don’t forget about youth sports. So, there has been a major collaborative effort up and down the West Coast, not just California, to really rally around each other in order to kind of just remind everybody that it is as important.

“As much as we want kids to be safe and get a high quality education, the CIF would attest that education-based athletics are important as well and what the kids take from it.”

Abe said the waiting and the uncertainty has been extremely tough on his players. Portola is the defending Pacific Coast League champion and Abe would like nothing better than to give his players a chance to win the second in school history.

CIF officials decided that no playoffs will be held this year, but they’re hoping abbreviated regular seasons can begin in March and end in either the middle of April or the end of April.

Coronavirus cases have been trending lower, which could help Orange County eventually get out of the most restrictive purple tier. Under the current structure, counties would need to be in the orange tier, which is two tiers below purple, for football to begin, and there isn’t much time for that to happen.

Abe stressed that players need football.

“Not having that (football) is definitely taking a toll on a lot of kids,” Abe said. “We’re all scrambling to do our best to give them as much of a normal experience as we can, but obviously, things are missing, just everything, it’s tough. It’s definitely been a tough time but cases are trending in the right direction and NFHS has taken another look and revised their guidelines.

“Hopefully it won’t be long and California will do something similar, and our numbers are going in the right direction. We’re trying to stay ready as best we can. There is no excuse to not be ready. We’ve had so much time. We’ve had to get creative during this time, but that’s kind of all we’ve had is time.”

Abe said he and his staff are trying to keep their players focused.

“Keeping the kids engaged has definitely been a challenge but they’re here, they show up and they’re doing everything the coaches ask so I’m just excited to continue to keep working to provide an opportunity for those guys to get a chance to show what they can do,” he said.

Abe said he’s remaining positive about football starting, although there has been no clear-cut announcement from state or CIF officials on whether it will.

“We’re holding out hope, that’s for sure and in the last three days, things have changed so fast and it allows everybody to maintain a little bit of hope because it’s definitely trending in the right direction,” Abe said. “We just had to get through the holidays and kind of that post-holiday surge and things are starting to kind of get back to how they were feeling in the summertime. Who would have thought that the numbers in the summertime are what we are wishing (for).

“Between that and the multiple revisions of guidelines, how can you not be hopeful because things literally in one week can be the worst case scenario and then the next week, it’s all positive. So we’re riding the wave of positivity right now and looking forward to continuing that trend in the next couple of weeks.”

Abe said he believes two weeks of full practice, as the CIF has proposed, is needed before all teams, not just football squads, can begin play.

“Everybody is going to need some time because starting your season vs. conditioning and skills training is not the same as just prepping for your individual sport so I think everybody is pushing and trying to leverage where they can to get that greenlight sooner rather than later, because no matter when the season starts, we’re going to need time to get ready,” he said.

Abe, who developed the Portola football program from the ground up, said he’s used to challenges.

“We’re going on year five here since I’ve been at Portola and it seems like every year has been the most challenging,” he said. “We’re taking it one day at a time, that’s all we can do.”

-Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com