Scoring Points: COVID in the playoffs

Here in our Fetch Your News coverage area, we’ve already seen a few teams have to cancel games due to covid-19 stipulations. Copper Basin had their game cancelled last week and Fannin and Gilmer had to cancel their game also.

A question that everyone asks when you talk about cancelled games is if they will be making that game up. So far, the answer has been no.

When discussing these cancellations with some of my friends, I started to wonder what would happen if a local area team had covid complications during the postseason. After doing some research and thanks to a press release from the Georgia High School Association last week, we finally have the answers.

Once the playoffs begin, canceled games will be season-ending to teams that can’t play, Georgia High School Association executive director Robin Hines said Thursday. Hines said that they would have no choice but to advance the team that could play and passed all their protocols.

“We’d have to press on at that time; that’s when a forfeit would kick in,” Hines said. “The team they’re supposed to play would pick up the win and move on.”

In the regular season when games have been cancelled because of the covid protocols, depending on if it is a region or conference game, it would either go down as a forfeit or a no contest. Most of the time the teams agree upon a no contest if it is out of their region.

It really sucks to think that your favorite high school football team could be days away from playing in their first regional championship game, and have to forfeit because someone around the team or on the team had a positive cocid result or did not pass the covid protocols. That’s just the world we are living in now I guess.