Two more Midlands football programs won’t play this week because of COVID-19
Mid-Carolina football and Batesburg-Leesville football teams won’t play the next two weeks because of COVID-19, the schools announced Wednesday.
“Due to COVID-19 issues, the Mid-Carolina High School Varsity Football games scheduled for October 9 and October 16 have been postponed until further notice,” the school posted on its Facebook page Wednesday.
The Rebels were supposed to play at Keenan this week and Lower Richland on Oct. 16. Those games will be made up at the end of the year. M-C will play Keenan on Oct. 30 and Lower Richland on Nov. 5 or Nov. 6.
Batesburg-Leesville was scheduled to to play Columbia on Friday and Newberry next week. The Columbia game will be made up Oct. 30, according to B-L coach Gary Adams. No makeup date has been set for Newberry game.
“Due to possible exposure to the COVID-19 virus, the B-L High School Varsity Panther football team will be inactive for the next two weeks,” Lexington District 3 posted on its Facebook page on Thursday morning.
The 2020 football season began Sept. 25 for public high schools. Mid-Carolina and B-L are the ninth and 10th school to have at least one player reported as having or being exposed to COVID-19.
Twenty-eight 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.
That game will be made up Thursday, Oct. 29 at District Two Stadium in Blythewood.
S.C. high school teams are playing a shortened seven-game season during the pandemic, and teams are playing regional contests first. Those games help determine playoff seeding. The season is started a little more than a month later than originally planned.
According to S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control data, there have been 1,041 reported cases among SC K-12 schools since school began. That number includes 741 student cases and 301 employee cases, according to the DHEC database.
According to DHEC, Mid-Carolina has had seven cases among students the last 30 days. 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 this season are Swansea, Camden, Lexington, River Bluff, Pelion, Newberry, Westwood and Lugoff-Elgin.
Lexington and River Bluff open their seasons Friday with Lexington hosting Ridge View and River Bluff hosting Dutch Fork.
This story was originally published October 7, 2020 at 5:41 PM.
