Members of Brocton basketball team in quarantine
BROCTON — The Brocton boy’s basketball team has become the latest group in a line of Chautauqua County high school teams to postpone activities due to COVID-19.
The players who were deemed to have played significant minutes in a recent game must quarantine for 10 days due to contact tracing, as per the County Health Department. The problem for the Brocton Bulldogs is that it includes everyone.
“We were told by our superintendent and athletic director that anyone who had significant minutes in the game had to quarantine,” said Brocton coach Collin Mulcahy. “Every one of our guys played, we’re really young and have no JV team, so all 10 guys are in quarantine because they played for at least five minutes throughout the game.”
Despite the fact that the players all had to quarantine, Mulcahy and his assistants were separated enough from the Frewsburg players and staff that they did not have to follow the same quarantine procedure as the team.
“Myself and two assistants didn’t have contact with coaches and players for longer than a minute,” Mulcahy said. “There were no handshakes or anything, so we were pretty safe about that.”
Brocton played against the Frewsburg Bears on Wednesday, Feb. 10, and were scheduled to play against Cassadaga Valley last Friday; however, before the game, the team found out about Frewsburg’s positive test and acted from there.
“The quarantine started on Friday, I was literally walking out the door to head to the school when the superintendent called and told us the news about Frewsburg,” Mulcahy said. “We had our game Friday canceled, and had three games this week canceled.”
The team hopes to return to action against Maple Grove on Feb. 22. The good news for Brocton though is that, as of Monday, Mulcahy said that him and all his players are feeling fine, and that his players are taking it very seriously.
“So far everyone is feeling good,” Mulcahy said. “There are no symptoms, some guys have gotten tested even though they weren’t required to. They took it upon themselves and I’m proud of them for that.”
Though Brocton does not have it’s own girls basketball team, there are girls from Brocton that play for the Westfield team. As of now, because the incident with Frewsburg was an isolated incident, Mulcahy doesn’t think that his team having to quarantine will impact the Brocton girls who play for Westfield.