As reported by Dr. Sonny Arnel yesterday evening, this Friday’s Homecoming football game, along with the Oct. 2 football game are postponed due to 16 football players being placed under mandatory quarantine from possible COVID-19 exposure. These students have not all tested positive, and there is not an outbreak of COVID-19 amongst football players, according to Activities Director Scott Harris. These measures are merely precautionary, and these students have been placed under quarantine due to contact tracing from multiple outside incidents.

    Dr. Arnel broke this news with a heavy heart, but did so with the safety of students, staff and family in mind.

    “I regret that we have to postpone competition that our students and coaches prepare for. I know effort, passion and time go into all the preparation that is wasted when we postpone competitions,” Dr. Arnel said. “However, we are focused on what is best for all of Spartan Nation … I urge all of us to be diligent in protecting ourselves when we are apart so that our time together can be that much more rich.”

    Head Coach Pete Eberhardt experienced a similarly somber reaction upon realizing competition would be postponed.

    “[I feel] sad for our seniors,” Coach Eberhardt said. “Right now, we’re gonna miss two games at least and, you know, you never know what may happen in the next couple days so it’s really sad for those guys.”

    Mr. Harris expressed similar disappointment, but stresses that it was very important for quarantining measures to be put in place.

    “All of our precautions and things in place led to too many kids who can’t play,” Mr. Harris said. “That’s unfortunate and disappointing, but it’s a lot better than the alternative: having a team full of COVID-positive players.”

    The dates for rescheduled games have not yet been decided, but football players who were not affected by contact tracing will continue to practice as they did prior to this incident.

    “We’ll just do it like it’s a bi-week [practice] since we don’t have a game, so we would just practice like we would normally practice, essentially,” Mr. Eberhardt said. “We’re adding in some more … different activities and things at the end of practice. Like yesterday we … did a seven-on-seven tournament with our kids.”

    Coach Eberhardt emphasizes the importance of offering stress-free activities for remaining football players so they can take their minds off of their current situation.

    “[We] try and keep it as fun as possible and, you know, try not to think that we [won’t] play for two weeks,” Coach Eberhardt said. “[We’ll] just keep chugging along if we can.”

    Mr. Eberhardt adds that COVID-19 precautions are being taken as seriously as ever by all football players and coaches.

    “We’ve been doing the standard [precautions] and… none of the cases were related, they all came from different places, so everything that we’re doing on our team seems to be working,” Coach Eberhardt said. “There’s no way we can possibly know [for sure] if it is or not, you know, so [we] clean everything. Everybody wears a mask and we try to stay socially distanced.”