Los Angeles Vaccine Mandate Abruptly Ends Well Known High School Football Team's Season

A Los Angeles Unified School District mandate that went into effect on Sunday ended an iconic high school football team's season.

The Crenshaw High School football team, the five-time city champions, ended up with only 13 players who are fully vaccinated. According to KTTV-TV, the district demands a team must have at least 18 fully vaccinated players to compete, thus abruptly ending Crenshaw's season.

A Crenshaw player who did not get vaccinatedsaid the LAUSD's vaccine mandate "kind of messed me over for scholarships."

"Yeah, playoffs, especially championship games, that's really where everything gets seen, and that's what I was hoping on," he goes on.

The mandate will hurt students in other areas, as Crenshaw coach Robert Garrett notes.

"They knew last week that I was not going to have 18 kids. I played 15 kids. The other kids are there so they won't be on the street. They're there for social and emotional development."

Got that? A vaccine for a virus that poses little risk to most youth football players trumps social and emotional development in Los Angeles.

"It should be a free choice if you're gonna be vaccinated or not," parent Lala Brown told KTTV. "And if they are not vaccinated, there are people who don't agree with the vaccine but at least do some type of testing, and if people are negative then they should be able to play."

Most students cannot get back what they lost socially and academically in the past year and a half. From at-home learning to canceled sports seasons to unreasonable mandates, no group suffered more during the pandemic than school students. That's not political, it's disheartening.