We do not know how much longer social distancing will be necessary, but it looks like it will carry into at least the first quarter of 2021.
NOTE: I usually stay away from politics at the studio like the plague (so to speak), but I feel this must be stated because of differing infor-mation on the future of COVID-19. When something goes wrong with my car, I listen to mechanics. When something goes wrong with my toilet, I listen to plumbers. So, I choose to listen to infectious disease experts rather than politicians when it comes to COVID-19 in order to do what is best for your children.
That said, I know we are all tired of social distancing, but the infectious disease experts say it will likely get bad again soon, and a vaccine will not be available to the general public until mid-2021 at the earliest. Therefore, we must plan into the future with continued social distancing while at the same time try to return to some semblance of normality. I seriously thought this would only be a couple of months, and we would be able to get back to normal. I would truly like to get back to a normal schedule and normal activities, like sparring, weapons and tournaments. However, it does not look like that will happen anytime soon. Keeping within the current limitations, we do intend to try to start adding other activities back.
We have started practicing with weapons one week per month. We sanitize the weapons before and after use. We recommend students acquire their own weapons to limit the amount of touching shared equipment. Check our calendar on page 1 every month to see when to bring your weapons.
We cannot do contact sparring with gear, especially shared gear, but are considering reinstituting padded weapons sparring, which is done at a greater distance than regular sparring and does not involve direct contact. Please let us know if you are okay with this for your child.
We are allowing limited numbers of adults to observe their children in class. See the details of this on page 1 of this newsletter.
We would like to begin attending tournaments again, but only ones that make provisions for social distancing and do not include sparring. So far there have not been any we have considered promoting but hope there will be some soon. We have not yet decided if we will run our own tournament next year. I hope we can return to our normal procedures next year and hope you will stay supportive until that happens. We truly appreciate our students and their families.