Eastern Alamance paused all volleyball team activities Monday when a player tested positive for COVID-19, becoming at least the second high school fall sports team in Alamance County to have to temporarily shut down because of the coronavirus.
“By both teams (varsity and junior varsity) practicing together, they both have to sit for the next 14 days,” Eastern Alamance athletics director John Kirby told the Times-News.
The player appears to be asymptomatic, but tested positive after being around someone else who tested positive for the virus, Kirby said.
Western Alamance paused all volleyball activities, including practices and games, immediately following tryouts for a period of two weeks from Nov. 5-19 due to the positive test of a player, Warriors athletics director Michael Pennington told the Times-News.
“When the student-athlete notified us, our principal and school nurse followed all the information,” Pennington said, “and I guess you could say the health department is the one that gave us the dates that shut us down.
“So in other words, it wasn’t us as a group, because no one in the group, except the student-athlete that tested positive, had any symptoms. That student-athlete, I don’t think, had any symptoms. She was notified that she was a close contact, I think, and then she went and got tested and she tested positive. Because they were all together, we only have one coach, that’s why we were shut down.”
The Warriors have been impacted in some form by coronavirus in boys’ and girls’ basketball, cross country, lacrosse and swimming and diving, Pennington said. Those instances have not risen to the level of needing to pause activities, he said.
“We’ve had athletes or parents of athletes in those groups that have tested positive,” Pennington said. “We had several kids that have had it or someone in their family was named as a close contact or something like that.”
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