Centennial High football team shut down because of COVID
The first day of high school football practice Monday was expected to be an exciting time for Clark County School District teams that haven’t been allowed to play since 2019.
But one team was already sidelined because of COVID-19. Centennial was informed Friday by the CCSD that it was being shut down for 10 days because of a positive case in its program.
“The kids are obviously upset about not being able to start when everybody else is supposed to start,” Centennial coach Dustin Forshee said.
Centennial was shut down for 10 days in the spring and 10 in the summer. The Bulldogs will have missed 30 days by the time they are allowed to get back on the field Aug. 9, putting them well behind teams that haven’t been affected.
Teams are required to hold 10 days of practice before playing a game, per Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association rules. If the Bulldogs begin practice Aug. 9, their game against Shadow Ridge on Aug. 20 should be safe, but they probably won’t be allowed to scrimmage before that game.
The CCSD hasn’t released an official statement listing its COVID-19 protocols for the 2021-22 school year. Forshee said he expects the protocols to be the same as they were during spring and summer, except athletes and staff members aren’t expected to be submitted to mandatory testing.
“The district hasn’t released anything official yet, and that’s a big sticking point of what’s happening,” Forshee said. “This is worse than it was for spring sports because we can’t make up games. In baseball, you can play day after day. With football, you can’t do that. If we miss our first game, it’s not like I can go out and schedule somebody else. We have to have time to plan. We can’t just show up to play a game.”
An email sent to school athletic directors Monday afternoon from CCSD athletic director Tim Jackson said teams should “implement previously approved, spring 2020, mitigation plans for all intramurals and approaching practices, immediately.”
Even for teams that were allowed to practice Monday, it wasn’t completely back to normal.
A statewide mask mandate for all indoor activities was reinstated last week, and teams are encouraged to practice social distancing as much as possible.
That means teams will have fewer chances to spend time together in the locker room and build a cohesive team.
“It is difficult. As a head coach, I’m trying to limit the time that kids spend in close proximity because of COVID,” Green Valley coach Brian Castro said before his team’s practice. “When you do that, you limit the messages you can send out and the opportunity for kids to get to know each other. Hopefully our kids have been talking to each other enough away from this, but you just don’t know.”
Contact Jason Orts at jorts@reviewjournal.com. Follow @SportsWithOrts on Twitter.