By Patrick Adrian
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CLAREMONT — Despite a resurgence in regional cases of the novel coronavirus and positive diagnoses in neighboring schools, school districts still expect to participate in winter athletic competitions and traveling to games with precautions in place, according to Claremont School District Athletics Director Doug Beaupre.
In an interview with the Eagle Times, Beaupre confirmed that players on the Stevens High School soccer team participated in a one-day quarantine last week after learning of a potential contact with a Newport High School student who had tested positive with the novel coronavirus. The quarantine was only precautionary while the school district conducted contact tracing protocol last week and the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) concluded there was no concern regarding possible exposure.
“I was only informed that it was a possibility of contact,” Beaupre said. “The DHHS [later] informed us that we did not have anything to worry about.”
Newport Superintendent Brendan Minnihan announced Thursday a second reported case of COVID-19 in Newport Middle High School, making the second documented case in the span of two weeks.
This second case has no connection to the first one, according to Minnihan. Additionally the circumstances of the additional case do not require a temporary closure of the school.
“Anyone who needs to be contacted has been contacted and there’s no need to shut down our buildings,” Minnihan told the Newport School Board on Thursday. “We just wanted to put this [information] out as soon as possible as we just found out [this afternoon].”
Newport is currently seeing a significant spike in positive case numbers due to an outbreak at the Woodlawn Care Center, a residential care facility on Pine Street. As on Friday Woodlawn is reporting 18 active cases among residents and five cases among staff. According to an update from Woodlawn on Facebook, a total of eight staff have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, though one person has recovered and two others are no longer actively employed.
Despite a statewide resurgence of the virus, Beaupre said there has been no discussion from the state at this time regarding changes to school winter sports.
“Until we get that word [of a stoppage] from the state, we are going to continue trying our best to get kids the opportunity to play the sports they enjoy,” Beaupre said.
Winter sports that have participation from Claremont students include basketball, swimming, bowling, ice hockey and wrestling.
Some sports may experience adjustments due to varying health or safety regulations, Beaupre indicated. These impacts could depend on differing policies of participating school districts or state guidelines.
For example, the districts are considering replacing multi-school swim meets with head-to-head competitions between two schools, Beaupre said. Additionally, districts will unlikely be able to schedule meets at the Upper Valley Aquatic Center in Hartford, Vermont because of Vermont’s current travel restrictions against New Hampshire residents.
Regional teams would still have three available pools for meets: The Claremont Community Center, the Carter Community Building Association Witherell Recreation Center in Lebanon and the swim facility at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, Beaupre said.
For basketball this season, Claremont is looking to require players to wear masks and play games without fans in attendance, at least to start the season, Beaupre said. Many of the districts that Claremont expects to play are considering these initial policies as well.
This will be the first opportunity for students to play in winter sports since March when a statewide closure of schools prematurely ended the high and middle school seasons.
“Last spring was an awful situation for the kids, especially for the seniors,” Beupre said.
The participating districts have worked diligently together to balance the needs of student-athletes with health considerations, according to Beaupre.
“We have been very thorough in talking to each other,” Beaupre said. “Everybody has been doing a great job keeping each other up to date.”
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