FARMINGTON – When local sports teams were allowed back on the courts and in gyms across San Juan County in early 2021, capacity limits were enacted and fans were required to sit apart from each other and wear masks.
Players were also required to wear masks during those days that, for many who still coach local prep athletes, carry long-standing ramifications.
With the fall prep sports season underway this week across New Mexico, administrators, coaches and athletes have learned to adjust to a new role sports plays for local youth.
Five years after the widespread disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the landscape of school and youth athletics has evolved into a period of structural realignment.
According to the Aspen Institute, while overall physical activity and sports engagement have rebounded past pre-pandemic levels, the lingering effects present a distinct set of physical, financial and institutional dynamics for student-athletes.
According to the Aspen Institute’s “Project Play” report, participation rates among younger children since 2021 have fully recovered and reached historic highs, propelled by casual sports offerings, modified game formats and institutional efforts to re-engage children in group play.
Conversely, regular sports participation among high school teenagers has experienced a slight post-pandemic decline.
Missing critical developmental windows during middle school lockdowns caused many students to drop out of varsity pathways altogether because of skill gaps, loss of athletic identity or competing priorities like early entry into the workforce.
The challenges have been harder on athletes across San Juan County, particularly across the Navajo Nation.
While public high schools across urban New Mexico resumed modified hybrid sports by early 2021, tribal and Bureau of Indian Education schools on the Navajo Nation maintained strict closures into late 2021 to protect multigenerational households and tribal elders.
In New Mexico, the start date for the return of prep sports was pushed back several times before the New Mexico Activities Association got approval to begin making plans for athletes to return Feb. 22, 2021.
In Arizona, the state athletic association reintroduced competition a month earlier, with an exception for schools on the Navajo Nation, which waited several months before starting the next sports season. Sports teams on the reservation in Arizona did not return until fall 2021.
“We were all being very cautious. The difference between a year is we know more,” Ryan Dodson, then-athletic director at Window Rock High School, told The Navajo Times. “We know more information. Is it any more dangerous? Is it any less dangerous? We know how to protect ourselves. We know how to protect our elders.”
The staggered return in 2021 has had lasting impacts.
Missing nearly two full years of structured competition hit middle school and early high school cohorts hard.
Five years later, high school athletic departments still note a gap in fundamental sports development for athletes who were in sixth through eighth grades during the peak pandemic years, leading to lower participation rates in technical sports.
“There’s still stuff from that COVID era that lingers, because there’s a lot of kids who didn’t get to do anything, and they may not be as interested in doing it anymore,” Kirtland Central High School football coach Bob Shuttleworth said. “I’ve seen it with kids that were playing — next thing you know, they never came back out again. They got used to being at home; they don’t want to come. Even when I was teaching, you saw it. Those COVID years hurt those kids.”
Youth programs have also been hit hard, with participation recovering slowly across San Juan County.
“Our youth football numbers are way down, and I think that’s directly involved in that time,” Bloomfield High School head football coach Mike Kovacs said. “Our numbers are down and attitudes are changing drastically, and we don’t know how to deal with adversity.”
The acute mental health crises experienced by student-athletes during lockdowns catalyzed long-term institutional changes.
“I was shocked at how far our kids slipped physically and emotionally when they came back,” said Piedra Vista head football coach Jared Howell. “We were doing things, meeting every day online with them trying to make sure they were doing stuff on their own. But it was scary how rapid that decline was.”
According to a study released in 2024 by the Open Access Journal of Sports Medicine, schools now routinely integrate sports psychologists, mental health screenings and wellness protocols alongside physical training regimens.
Not all the news is bad, according to Farmington High head football coach Jeff Dalton.
Entering his 12th season on the Scorpions sideline, Dalton sees signs that kids did find other ways to participate in athletics outside of football.
“I think everyone feels like they might be losing a few. But we’re also adding sports. We added powerlifting and boys volleyball and schools are looking at girls flag football,” Dalton said. “So maybe your track numbers go down a little bit, but I think overall, you’re still going to have the same amount of kids participating. But the more we give the kids to do, it can thin out any program, but maybe in the long run, it even gives them more opportunities.”
Dalton expressed optimism that bigger programs remained close to the same amount of participation in the time since protocols and restrictions were loosened.
“I feel like the competition is still at a high level. Most of the big programs numbers are staying pretty consistent,” Dalton said. “The fact that we had just had a new school built, as far as football numbers, ours have actually increased. Our numbers went down a little bit this year, but we hadn’t had a team of 100 kids program-wide prior to COVID in a number of years. And every year since COVID, we have had over 100 on our roster.”
Social distancing protocols during the pandemic limited athletes’ abilities to participate at the training and competition levels. Higher rates of depressive symptoms have resulted among female athletes and those who identify strongly as athletes.
“We’re in a real generational shift when it comes to the mentality of today’s youth,” Kovacs said. “If you don’t wrap your head around how to embrace it and move forward, I think you’re going to be left behind.”