At least 12 quarantined after Midlands football team played a player who had COVID-19
Lugoff-Elgin and Westwood played each other on Friday night in high school football. Now both teams won’t be playing for the next two weeks.
The schools are postponing their games for this Friday and Oct. 16 because of COVID-19 impacts.
In a statement Monday evening, Richland 2 said that 12 Westwood players were placed in quarantine after the school was notified that a Lugoff-Elgin player who took part in Friday’s game tested positive for COVID-19.
“Westwood High coaches watched video from the game and identified the 12 players considered to be close contacts, or within six feet of the individual for a combined total of at least 15 minutes. The remainder of the Westwood High varsity football team has been informed that while they are not considered to be close contacts, they should monitor for symptoms,” Richland 2’s statement read.
Lugoff-Elgin is part of the Kershaw County School District. According to the Kershaw district, there are five active COVID cases and 19 quarantined students at Lugoff-Elgin. The number, however, does not specify whether any the 19 affected are L-E football players.
Multiple sources confirmed to The State that L-E will miss two games because of a COVID-related issue. The Kershaw County School District had not publicly commented on Lugoff-Elgin’s situation as Tuesday afternoon. The State left a phone message and sent an email seeking comment from the district.
The 2020 football season began Sept. 25 for public high schools. Lugoff-Elgin and Westwood are the seventh and eighth Midlands schools to have at least one player reported as having or being exposed to COVID-19.
More than half of the area’s 32 public high schools have had to reschedule or cancel games, either because of their own issues related to the virus or because of COVID-19 impacts to their opponents.
Lugoff-Elgin was supposed to play Richland Northeast and AC Flora the next two weeks, but those games will be moved to the end of the season. L-E will play RNE on Oct. 30 and AC Flora on Nov. 6.
Westwood was scheduled to play Dreher this Friday and Irmo on Oct. 16. The Dreher game will be held Oct. 30 and Irmo on Nov. 6.
That means Lugoff-Elgin’s rivalry game with Kershaw County foe Camden won’t be played this season. The two teams were scheduled to play their annual Wateree Rivalry game Nov. 6 to end the season. It will be the first time since 1982 the game won’t be played.
Camden also dealt with its own COVID-19 cases last month. The Bulldogs missed their second scrimmage and had the opener against Lakewood, scheduled for Sept. 25, moved to Oct. 30.
Camden opened its season last week with a 57-0 win over Manning. Lugoff-Elgin is 1-1 on the season after its loss to Westwood on Friday.
S.C. high school teams are playing a shortened seven-game season during the pandemic, and teams are playing region contests first. Those games help determine playoff seeding. The season is started a little more than a month later than originally planned.
K-12 schools in South Carolina have 97 newly reported coronavirus cases since Friday, when cases were last reported, according to S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control data. There have been 821 reported cases since school began. That number includes 570 student cases and 251 employee cases, according to the DHEC database.
According to DHEC, the standard quarantine period is 14 days after the last close contact with a person while they were contagious with COVID-19.
Other Midlands schools that have self-reported COVID-19 issues and postponed games are Swansea, Camden, Lexington, River Bluff, Pelion and Newberry.
Lexington and River Bluff open their seasons Friday with Lexington hosting Ridge View and River Bluff hosting Dutch Fork.
Pelion and Newberry each missed games this week and will not play this week. Both schools will make up their games at the end of season.
This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 4:17 PM.
