How one Modesto football team has dealt with multiple cancellations due to COVID
The 2021 High School Football Spring Season has entered its fifth and final week.
It went quickly – maybe not for coaches and administrators – and for the most part, teams have played all of their games.
Sure, there have been some cancellations due to COVID-19 and the April 10 contest between Escalon and Ripon featured two schools that had their own issues and didn’t play in Week 3 (Escalon also didn’t play in Week 2).
But, they played.
It’s been a tougher ride for Beyer, which found out an hour before they were scheduled to leave from campus on April 9 that its game against Lathrop was canceled due to COVID-19 issues within the Spartans program.
It was the second cancellation of the season for the Patriots and only in Week 3 against Los Banos were there no issues, Beyer coach Greg Bockman said.
“It’s been a wild ride,” Bockman said. “I can see the frustration and they can’t take the disappointment. It’s been up and down since last summer.”
With only a couple of weeks to practice and no scrimmage, Bockman and the coaching staff were quickly getting the team adjusted with the playbook and conditioning when the team had its first problem.
A positive test shut the team down for two days a week before the season started.
The Patriots were scheduled to play Davis in Week 1 but switched to Patterson and that game was moved from Friday to Saturday because of a shortage of officials.
With a short week of practice, the Patriots’ Week 2 game at Mountain House was moved from Thursday to Saturday.
That game was canceled on Friday after Mountain House was alerted of a positive test within the Lathrop program (its Week 1 opponent) and the Mustangs were unable to do contract tracing in time.
Besides the frustration of the cancellation after a full week of practice, Bockman said if the team had received the news earlier in the day, it could have played Davis (Lathrop’s Week 2 opponent), which traveled to Union City to play James Logan.
“We were hyped and excited after starting the season (lost to Patterson in Week 1),” senior lineman Alejandro Ramirez said. “Then we got the news and it just brought us down.”
The news was “disappointing” for a Beyer team that was 0-10 in 2018 and won the Western Athletic Conference in Bockman’s first year in 2019.
Bockman said the success increased turnout within the program but the number dropped dramatically during the pandemic.
The Patriots started preseason workouts with 44 players but are down to 25 and are fielding one team.
The Patriots won their first game of the season in Week 3 at Los Banos, 18-7, before the Lathrop cancellation.
At a recent practice, Bockman joked that when Athletic Director Eric Corgiat would walk over during practice, it was always bad news.
“We are keeping our heads up and grinding,” said Ramirez, who will attend Modesto Junior College next year to play football. “However, we weren’t guaranteed to have games so we are lucky to have some but it is frustrating because we all have friends who have played their full schedule.”
The Patriots end their season on Thursday against Davis at 7 p.m. at Downey.
“We are playing for them (seniors),” Bockman said. “They’ve given so much to our program and we want to send them out with a win.”
Still, despite all the issues, spirits were high at practice.
There were jokes, laughs, and smiles during the offensive portion of practice.
As the practice ended, the team huddled and chanted:
“All-In.”
This story was originally published April 15, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
