Fall sports are in motion and athletes are back on the field. Procedures are in place to handle exposure within teams, but effectiveness is still being questioned. 

“We try to avoid shutting whole teams down… by using mitigation strategies like putting players into different pods,” athletics trainer Caitlyn Cortese said. Coaches must submit a practice plan everyday so if an athlete contracts Covid, others can be contact traced to prevent large team quarantines. SCPS Athletics introduced these measures to prevent outbreaks within teams, but consistency of adherence is what has athletes and parents nervous. Varying sports have different ways of preventing and eliminating Covid-19 cases.

“Before school started we had someone get it [the coronavirus], we stopped for two weeks, then went back… it hurt us going into opening games, but to drop our cases I think we handled it correctly,” varsity football athlete Tyler Gladden said. 

As of right now, it is generally accepted that Covid-19 cases are being contained within teams, and the goal is that these circumstances remain through winter and spring sports. “We’re doing a lot of things to try and prevent whole teams from getting shut down,”Cortese said.