After seeing my story about Davis Heller, a college athlete who died after getting the shot to play for @ AlabamaBSB, a mom
wrote to me about the intense pressure her son’s college baseball team put on the kids to get the shots:
“When our son went to his freshman year, it was fall of 2021 and we thought we had dodged a bullet with needing the vaccine. When he first reported to school in August, it was not required. But almost immediately after moving in, they weren't 'forcing' it but everyone needed to get vacc'd in order to participate.
If you were unvacc'd, you were not allowed in the locker room, you'd have to use the visitors' locker room alone. You were not allowed to eat at the dining hall. You were not allowed to travel. You had to wear a mask working out but could not be around anyone else. It was ok to live with other players in student housing, but for some reason, not be around the team at the baseball field if you were unvacc'd.
These boys work their whole lives to get to this point and the coaches know it. The University let each team and head coach of those teams do whatever they wanted. I know of teams at that did not put these same restrictions in place. It seems that if a coach had a fear about it, they could push the boys to comply. So although the State of ** said it could not mandate the covid vac at its universities, the coaches sure could and they knew how to get around the language. No, it was not 'forced'. But without it, you basically couldn't be part of the team.
I see a lot of comments on your post of people saying, ' I would have pulled my son out and sued the school'. We thought about it. I tried to get in touch with the University President and VP with no response and with college sports, you can't just drop out as some parents suggested in your comment section. The NCAA is a whole other beast :)
Our son got the J&J vac after much debate (the rest of us are unvaccinated). We did not want him getting Pfizer or Moderna if he 'had' to get one. However, it was Pfizer that they were pushing. Our son was hassled by the coaches as to why he got J&J and not Pfizer. We have text messages to show how much they hassled him. He was the only one on the team to not get Pfizer and they let him know about it. When boosters came around, they tried forcing those too...they said it's ok to mix the J&J with the Pfizer booster and to get it done immediately. They brought in a doctor to talk to the boys and he proceeded to tell them that they were putting their teammates' lives in danger by not getting it. Then, for a couple of days, the doctor was camped out at the entrance of the locker room to encourage the shot. They were sent text messages almost daily. Our son was the only one on that team that year to not get the booster. We had had enough and just said no. For those 'hold outs' they were forced to get up and get tested twice a week at 5am. We told our son to hold strong and just go do it. Again, he was the only hold out...some teammates got the booster because they were tired of being scolded about it and they wanted to sleep in. After all of that, he's no longer with the team. The disdain for not having the booster was enough for him. There is more to this story but these are the big highlights.
These schools are truly making these boys choose between falling in line or derailing their future in college and potentially professional sports. We try to really research and focus on commonsense for our healthcare. It has caused his career to be sidetracked just a bit but that's ok. He's not done yet :) There are some amazingly great coaches out there and some just horrible people. I wish he wouldn't have gotten a shot at all but I worry more for those boys on the team who had 3-4 because a 'doctor' told them to. These are impressionable ages, and they know it.”
@ NCAA
this can never happen again.
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