HS football program halts drills after coronavirus exposure
Summer conditioning drills got off to an encouraging start June 15 at Marysville High School, where football has been a staple on campus since the 1920s.
Athletes trained in groups of nine, adhering to social distancing protocols and working up a good sweat amid good cheer during the otherwise concerning coronavirus pandemic that shuttered schools across the country in March.
And then the football fun suddenly stopped.
On Saturday, Marysville coach Jeff Freeman informed his coaching staff and varsity, junior varsity and freshman players by email, text and calls that, in conjunction with school administrators, he was suspending all football drills and meetings until July 1 due to a COVID-19 positive test.
The test result came from a patient at a Yuba County dental office in which a Marysville football staffer had an appointment June 15. That football staffer was notified June 20 that a patient had tested positive for the virus. The staffer has been in quarantine since June 20.
Amid the confusion of the timing of the football staffer’s dental appointment, it was learned that the patient who tested positive had a dental appointment a full week earlier. The football staffer was tested for the virus over the weekend, negative, and tested again for coronavirus on Tuesday afternoon to be extra sure.
Marysville is the first known program in the state that has suspended sports summer conditioning because of coronavirus concerns. The school is also an example of how to handle this sort of thing.
“We try to be as safe as possible, doing everything the right way, including work-station pods and distancing and constant cleansing, and we weren’t sure when our staffer was in contact or was even in contact with the person who was positive, so to be safe, let’s just go ahead and suspend drills for two weeks,” Freeman said. “We also found out that all the people who work at the dental office had tested negative, so that’s a good sign.”
Freeman added, “Our football kids are frustrated. They want to work out, be together. Parents are frustrated but are understanding. We know this isn’t an easy decision but it’s the right one. We knew that if something occurs, or the possibility of something happening with a positive test, that we have to keep our athletes and their families safe.”
Yuba County has had low COVID-19 cases, to the point that Wheatland High of the Yuba School District was the first in the state to start summer sports conditioning. It did so last month with clearance from school administrators and the county health department. As of Tuesday afternoon, Yuba County with a population of nearly 80,000 had 161 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 118 recoveries and four deaths.
Regardless of those encouraging numbers, Marysville athletic director David Chiono said his school made the right call.
“There’s no choice but to shut the drills down for a couple of weeks,” said Chiono, a 1979 graduate of the school. “We wanted to err on the side of caution. When we found out about this, we didn’t want a kid to get sick, or his grandparents, or his parents, so that’s why we made that call.”
Chiono added, “We’ve been very upfront with parents, but you know football and how parents can be and how some can go on a tangent. Then things get on social media, and people grasp onto things, and then holy smokes.”
The speculation on social media was that a host of Marysville players tested positive. Freeman said he fielded texts from concerned friends about his players testing positive. None tested positive, but those texting heard otherwise. Chiono said he can understand how eager players are to get back out to drills.
“I’m an assistant baseball coach at the school, and like everyone, we lost our season because of the virus,” he said. “You can’t replace a lost season. But you can’t replace the health of a player, or their parents or their grandparents, and that’s why we made this call to hold off for two weeks before we start up again.
“Sports are important, but this isn’t the end all, be all. It may feel like it for the kids, but there are bigger things going on.”
Despite the lost conditioning time, Marysville can make it up, and then some. So can other athletic programs that have yet to start summer drills.
The Sac-Joaquin Section, the governing body for prep sports in the greater Sacramento Valley, announced Monday it was waiving any fall sports dead periods, the usual shutdown of summer drills to ensure coaches and athletes have some time off.
The section wrote in part on its website, “If school athletic programs are able to practice, they can use summer rules until the start of the sports season. We are hopeful the season will begin on time, with the first practice for football on July 27 and for the remaining fall sports on Aug. 3.”