Several more high schools postpone football games as COVID-19 takes toll

Postponement of high school football games due to COVID-19 continues.

Layton High postponed its next two football games after the team had to be quarantined for two weeks due to positive coronavirus cases, Davis School District spokesperson Christopher Williams told The Salt Lake Tribune. The two-week quarantine began Tuesday.

As a result, games against Clearfield and Fremont were postponed.

Meanwhile, in Jordan School District, West Jordan High won’t play its sophomore or varsity games scheduled for Thursday and Friday, respectively, against Olympus High.

Jordan School District spokesperson Sandra Riesgraf told The Tribune that the principals of West Jordan and Olympus spoke Wednesday and mutually came to the decision to postpone the games. Both schools have positive cases of COVID-19, she said, and the games were postponed “out of an abundance of caution.”

Riesgraf added that no one in the football program tested positive for the coronavirus.

There are 10 active cases at West Jordan High and 156 individuals in quarantine, per Jordan District’s COVID-19 dashboard. The district as a whole has 173 cases and 1,683 in quarantine.

Copper Hills High has also postponed its next two games — Riverton High on Friday and Jordan High on Oct. 2 — after positive cases emerged within the team, Riesgraf said.

Olympus will play its homecoming game against Riverton after both those schools had opponents cancel because of COVID outbreaks. Olympus has had no team outbreaks.

All the postponements this week mark a continuation of a recent trend in which high school football programs are having to move games around due to COVID-19 cases.

Viewmont postponed two upcoming games and Skyline won’t play Friday against Brighton. Relatedly, Provo High tried moving its homecoming game to Spanish Fork so it could have fans — the city has moved to Orange caution status — but the school district blocked the move. Provo had previously postponed a game against Timpview.

Weber and Bingham postponed their opening week game. But after that, games proceeded on with seemingly few issues until the recent flurry of postponements.

The seven-day rolling average of coronavirus statewide has climbed in recent weeks. As of Thursday, it sat at 916 per day. Late last month, it was less than 400.