Illinois High School Athletes Mount Let Us Play Protest in Chicago

About 100 Illinois high school students and parents marched in Chicago on Saturday, urging governor JB Pritzker to "let us play" fall sports.

Here is local coverage of the protest from WGN:

And here is how Fox News covered the protest nationally:



As this map from Max Preps shows, Illinois and Minnesota were the only schools in the midwest who have yet to restore football season. The operative word here is "were," because Minnesota approved a return on Monday. So now Illinois is on an island.

Nonetheless, as recently as last week, Governor Pritzker all but the shut the door on a return of fall sports. “To those claiming that putting your child in danger is about personal choice, I say this is a pandemic,” he said last week, via the Chicago Tribune. “This is a terrible and unprecedented moment in our country. ... While parents might choose to send their children out onto the playing field, I can tell you that someone else who becomes ill because of that decision wouldn’t call that your personal choice.”

We recently covered high school football protests in Connecticut; while those did not wind up changing state policy as of yet, there is now a group of people aiming to organize a private football league in the state. Perhaps that could be an option for similarly frustrated players, parents, and coaches in Illinois.