Interesting back and forth between the state and some high schools in WV the last couple days.
HS Football starts this Friday. The state issued guidelines a few weeks ago that uses color coded measurements to determine if a school will be eligible to play each week. If you are located in a county that has a COVID rate in the green or yellow the Saturday before the game you can play with modified attendance. Orange or Red and you can’t play that week.
Naturally, some schools got the axe on Saturday. The following day some of those counties were back in the yellow which drew the ire of parents.
So the state goes back on their guidelines somewhat and tells counties now back in the yellow they can play but only if every player and coach tests negative between now and Friday. First off, that is a nightmare logistically. Secondly, if even one test comes back positive then with contact tracing not only would it knock a team out of a game this week but the next week as well with a 14 day quarantine. Once the schools figured this out they all opted out of the testing and decided to just sit this week out.
This is causing some headaches because you have some schools that are eligible to play but lost opponents for this Friday. So, those schools are calling each other and scheduling games on the fly even if it doesn’t necessarily make sense from a geographic or enrollment standpoint.
The county I live in was orange on Saturday so no schools can play this Friday. However, two schools in the county have agreed to play each other next Monday if the county is back to yellow on Saturday. This means they would play two games in one week, which the state is allowing. The schools that have agreed to play are Class AAA and Class A. That is the largest and smallest classification in the state and those type schools almost never play each other.