‘Multiple’ Junior Falcons test positive, players in self-isolation
Members of the St. Catharines Falcons Jr. B hockey team are in self-isolation until Friday after “multiple” players tested positive for COVID-19.
In an interview Monday, Tyler Bielby, head coach of the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League team, declined to specify how many players tested positive during the past week after a player exhibited “mild symptoms” on Oct. 30. That player’s positive test was confirmed by Niagara Region Public Health three days later.
“We need to get away from the specifics of the number, but we have ‘multiple’ positive COVID tests among our players,” Bielby said. “We have to be very careful for privacy reasons here, that’s why I prefer to stay away from specifics.
“As much as we want to be transparent as an organization, we have to really respect the privacy of the individual who has been diagnosed.”
Given the Golden Horseshoe Conference team only has 20 players on its roster, he suggested using a specific number other than saying “less than 10” would result in a “process of elimination narrowing down on
who it could be for people.”
Falcons coaches have tested negative for the coronavirus as have team staff.
Bielby apologized for not returning earlier messages left by The St. Catharines Standard last week after a controlled scrimmage with the Niagara Falls Canucks and a team practice were cancelled.
“I apologize for last week but as you can imagine, there are a lot of moving pieces and I needed to sort out our moving pieces as a team before I spoke to anybody,” he said.
As a precaution, the Falcons cancelled a controlled scrimmage versus Niagara Falls at Jack Gatecliff Arena in St. Catharines the night before the first positive test was confirmed.
“We had a player with a very light symptom without a positive test. At that point, we decided to cancel the Sunday game as a precaution,” Bielby said, recalling the sequence of events.
“At that point, we had not been told anything, so thank goodness we made that call.”
St. Catharines players underwent testing “pretty much all of last week.”
“The virus was brought into our dressing room so it’s not something that started in our room.”
No one on the Canucks, who shared a 50-person bubble with the Falcons for the purpose of scrimmaging together, has so far tested positive for the virus.
“So far, so good,” Frank Pietrangelo, owner and head coach of the Niagara Falls team, said Monday.
The Canucks, he added, were scheduled to practise later in the day at Gale Centre and are looking forward to playing the Fort Erie Meteors in a homeand-home controlled scrimmages this weekend.
Bielby said the 14-day period of self-isolation for the Falcons will be over Friday, “obviously pending any other bad news.”
“It sounds like we have gotten control of it. The players, most importantly, are doing well and are in good spirits considering,” he said.
The second-year head coach has kept in touch with the players since quarantining began.
“The general feeling is our players are at home isolated, getting some rest, generally feeling well and taking this one day at a time. For the most part, they seem to be doing well with it,” Bielby said. “Hockey is in the background while we work through this.
“It’s their health and making sure that no matter what happens next, it’s the right thing and that the right things are put into place to make sure that, maybe, this doesn’t happen again.”
Public health is dealing with the outbreak on an individual basis, rather than with the team.
“No one is speaking to us as the St. Catharines Falcons. When public health gets a positive case, they then go and do their interviews for contact tracing, whether that is someone in a kid’s household or whether that kid had a conversation with somebody at hockey,” Bielby said. “They’re not differentiating the two.”
“We’re not getting authority from anybody that the St. Catharines Falcons are cleared to play. These are all individual isolations. The boys receive directives from public health as individuals.
“And, as of Friday, the 13th, all the individuals, pending no positive test and symptoms, are cleared to resume normal life. It’s not about cleared to resume hockey.”
Bielby was asked whether he was surprised by the positive tests.
“Surprised is maybe the wrong word because the world we’re living in we’re hearing bad news every day,” he said. “There’s always the thought of ‘What happens if it happens to me or what happens if it happens to us?’”
The Falcons are confident they are taking the right steps in “protecting the players as much as we can.”
“In this case, it was something that was brought into the dressing room and we have to look to see how to avoid that moving forward and continue to put a lot of emphasis on making sure those masks are worn at all times, from the time we enter the rink to the time we leave the rink,” Bielby said. “I think that’s the biggest take-away from public health is to be exposed, you have to be really in common space and that’s probably why Niagara Falls is free to do what they’re doing.
“Even in a game setting, there’s strictly not enough close contact for this disease to spread, where the issue may lie when we get into low-ventilated areas.”