Season Summed Up: Freshman Football Season Cut Short Due to COVID

Friday night football games no longer come with bleachers thundering with immense school spirit and the pregame huddles come with COVID-19 precautions.

While the sophomore, junior and senior athletes alike are putting their utmost efforts into the sport, the freshman team has recently been sidelined from participating for the rest of the season.

The fun of the sport and feel of belonging to a team has been ripped away from freshman players, due to the spread of COVID amongst the team. One member of the team tested positive for the virus between Oct. 10 and Oct. 11, while several players had family members testing positive. Although with contact tracing, it was concluded that the player didn’t contract the virus from football, the case warranted cancellation of their season until further notice.

Before this occurred, the football team as a whole had already struggled with COVID-related issues, with various other confirmed cases across all age groups and teams. None of those cases had ever warranted the cancellation of any specific team’s season, however, they are all still prepared for the worst. According to the freshmen, they haven’t been given a specific answer why their season was cancelled as opposed to the others.

Freshman football player Joey Hoffman was well aware of the possible negative outcome of their season after his coach, Sean Hair, addressed the possibility. He wanted to ensure that the team understood what conditions they were working under.

“He would always just say we never know when our last practice is going to be,” Hoffman said. “So, we had to know that could happen.”

Once one of Hoffman’s teammates contracted COVID-19, there were no new conditions put in place for the other teams to further prevent any future cases from occurring other than having the freshman season being canceled. As of now, the teams with a remaining season are required to wear a mask under their helmets for a majority of the football game. Students participating in practices are encouraged to practice social distancing when possible, and generally stay conscientious outside of practices.

Despite the team knowing the risk of their season potentially being canceled from the start, they had high hopes for what could have been a very successful year for freshman football. Freshman football player Teddy Courville claims the coach and team worked as hard as possible until they were forced to stop.

“Coach said that we are gonna fight our way through the season,” Courville said. “And we aren’t going to stop until we are forced to.” 

Numerous players on the team seem to agree about the team’s prospects — if they were to have had a full football season. Freshman football player Porter Konold spoke on how the team imagined the season could look. 

“Going into it, we all thought we were probably going to win every game,” Konald said. “We played good.”

The excitement of a successful year was quickly taken away once the season’s plug was pulled, leaving many members of the team frustrated for their loss of playing time. Many of the players were more upset about the way the situation was handled and don’t agree with the verdict of complete cancellation. Courville suggested that games and practices could have just been postponed.

“I understand why they did it, but I just don’t agree with it,” said Courville. “I feel like we could just postpone the game coming up or postpone a week of practice.” 

While the season itself has come to an abrupt end leaving many players unhappy, there is still hope for some kind of football experience to become available for freshman players. The players were informed of a scrimmage happening between the freshman and sophomore players on Oct. 29. This also includes a possible practice session starting Oct. 23. 

The freshmen hope this will provide a second chance to get back out on the field to have some fun in the place of what would have been their football season.