Burke County is the latest and among four football teams that won’t play their opening games next week because of COVID-19 concerns.
Burke County Schools, citing 40 positive cases, announced Friday that it won’t reopen until Aug. 30, and football coach Eric Parker confirmed to the AJC that the football team can’t practice or play games until the schools re-open.
Burke County, a high school 30 miles south of Augusta, was scheduled to play Benedictine on Aug. 20 and Richmond Hill on Aug. 27. The Benedictine game won’t be played. Burke has rescheduled the Richmond Hill game for Sept. 10, when both schools had open dates.
Sumter County, Crisp County and Randolph-Clay, all South Georgia schools, also have canceled opening games.
Crisp County would’ve opened at Tift County. Sumter County was scheduled to play at home against Westover. Randolph-Clay had a home game with Dougherty.
“I imagine you better get used to it,’’ Parker said of COVID disruptions. “We’ve just got a situation where our school system and community’s got a lot of positive cases, and when you start contact-tracing out, the numbers kept growing. Being in a small school system, all these kids in high school have got siblings in middle and elementary, and it can get hectic when you’ve got a situation like that. I don’t think it was a knee-jerk reaction.”
In 2020, the pandemic canceled about 10% of regular-season games and postponed many more.
‘’I don’t want to be a pessimist,’’ Parker said, “but I expect we’ll have this going on every week.’’
