Santa Cruz County: COVID-19 testing issue halts high school football

Another COVID-19 testing issue has temporarily put a halt to high school football competitions in Santa Cruz County, the Santa Cruz Sentinel learned late Friday. Three scrimmages slated for Saturday have been canceled and future games are in jeopardy of not being played.

“There is an issue in interpretation of testing protocols,” said Travis Fox, Aptos High’s athletics director. “There is conflicting information on the frequency of testing.”

All 10 county schools were under the impression that they would only need to test once each week, 48 hours ahead of scheduled contests.

Santa Cruz athletics director Erik Redding said Santa Cruz conducted antigen testing, funded by Santa Cruz City Schools, on Thursday. County health officer Dr. Gail Newel is requiring that PCR testing also take place, moving forward.

Redding and Principal Michelle Poirier met with the Cardinals on Friday to inform them of the bad news. Redding said he and football coach Bubba Trumbull are upset by the continual building up and breaking down of players.

“The communication part, something is missing,” Redding said of the dialogue between the County of Santa Cruz Health Services Agency and the schools.

“It was depressing, the kids were disappointed,” Redding said. “But they were glad they were able to ask our principal questions. They all wanted to know about next week.”

Asked if he had been informed about the expected frequency of testing, Fox said, “This has not been made clear to me. This is all breaking and happening in the past 24 hours. Of course, it happened on a Friday afternoon. I cannot confirm or deny any number.”

The first round of testing for Aptos, Watsonville and Pajaro Valley was paid for by the Pajaro Valley Unified School District. Fox said Aptos is in the process of working on feasible long-term options for future rounds of testing.

Fox said news of the competition stoppage trickled down from PVUSD’s superintendent, Dr. Michelle Rodriguez, to Aptos Principal Peggy Pughe to himself. Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League commissioner Bob Kittle also sent an email Friday to every athletics director in the county, informing them of the ruling.

Kittle couldn’t be reached for comment Saturday morning.

Fox believes the halt to football competition was out of the PVUSD’s hands. PVUSD, Santa Cruz City Schools, San Lorenzo Valley Unified and Scotts Valley Unified govern the schools participating in the 2021 SCCAL season.

“I truly feel supported by our administration at PVUSD,” Fox said. “We love Dr. Rodriguez. She has been the number one supporter of athletics.”

On Wednesday, several games scheduled for Friday and Saturday were canceled due to multiple teams having not yet tested. There needs to be a 48-hour window between when test results are received and the game. Several teams, with the exception of Harbor and Pajaro Valley, made adjustments on the fly and scheduled scrimmages for Saturday.

Saturday scrimmages were to include Aptos at Santa Cruz, Watsonville at San Lorenzo Valley, and Monte Vista Christian at Soquel before they were scrapped.

Aptos held a competitive practice Friday night and posted pictures on Instagram.

The SCCAL went 1 for 5 in its opening week. Scotts Valley beat St. Francis 12-0 at Santa Cruz High on Thursday night. Both schools funded their own testing. The game was live-streamed as fans are not allowed to attend games.

Fox said Aptos plans to keep up with the SCCAL football schedule and play Monte Vista Christian next weekend.

As for cross country — less than two weeks away from the SCCAL championships — and all other light contact sports, it’ll be business as usual.

Fox said Aptos was abuzz Saturday morning with the soccer and wrestling programs participating in outside conditioning and the baseball and softball programs working on their fields.

“Sure (the football decision) left a bad taste in our mouths, but there are so many good things happening right now,” Fox said. “I’m so proud of the coaches and happy to be playing sports on campus right now. We have all sports running, except for lacrosse.”