COVIDs Effect on HS Playoffs

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Created on Tuesday, 13 April 2021 23:50
Written by John Habershaw

NEK - COVID-19 had a tremoundous impact on the landscape of the playoffs for many highschool basketball and hockey teams in the North East Kingdom

     The Danville girls basketball team faced off against a depleted 1 seeded West Rutland team in the semi-finals where West Rutland was without their starting five due to potential exposure in their previous playoff game. Danville went on to beat West Rutland 44 to 22, in the semi-finals to advance to their first appearance in the championship game since 2008. Danville was slated to face off against the Proctor Phantoms on March 27th, at Barre Auditorium but had to forfeit due to COVID-19 protocols, which in turn, Proctor claimed the championship.

     The Kingdom Blades were asked to conduct contact tracing procedures, after a game they played against MVU. The Kingdom Blades were then notified that each player had to take a COVID test, which then ruled out the cooperative team out of the playoffs. They were scheduled to to face Rice on March 16th in the D-1 quarter finals. Teams knew going into the playoffs that the protocols and restrictions were going to be firmly set in place because of COVID-19. Vermont Principal Associtation Executive Director, Bob Johnson, stated "We made it very clear at the very beginning when we entered the tournament to all schools that our procedure is going to be that if a team had to withdraw than we were going to have that team forfeit..." 

     Johnson continued "You know this is going to be two years in a row that D1 or D4 didn't have a championship game, but we didn't really have a lot of choices because we have to move onto our next season." The next season that Johnson is referring to is the spring sports season, last year at this time Johnson and the VPA had to make the difficult decision to cancel the entirity of the spring season. This year though with Spring in full swing, brings great news the spring season officially begins Saturday, April 17th.