MISSISQUOI OUTBREAK SPREADS TO ESSEX, FIRST TEAM-TO-TEAM SPREAD STATEWIDE, STATE SAYS
By Gregory J. Lamoureux
County Courier
When the Missisquoi Valley Union High School boys hockey team hosted Essex on February 27th, the Thunderbirds were missing at least one player due to concerns of COVID-19. Fast forward about a week to March 5th, both Milton and Missisquoi’s Hockey teams were put on hold to conduct testing and stop the spread.
The virus continued to spread through the community, according to health officials, to a point that by March 11th, an announcement that Missisquoi would cancel all of the remainder of their sports programs, and go to remote learning for at least the next 14 days, and up to 28, depending upon the spread of the virus throughout the Northwest portion of Franklin County.
On Friday, Vermont Secretary of Education Dan French said the decision to go to remote learning for the entire school district came because of a lack of staff able to run in-person learning.
Also on Friday, Vermont Health Commissioner Mark Levine said there was little to worry about with school sports, noting that at that time there had been no cases of the novel coronavirus known to have spread from one team to another. Instead, Levine said the virus spread that the state had identified was only within one team.
Publicly, that information changed on Tuesday afternoon after a question at the Governor’s news conference by the County Courier spurred the Health Commissioner to admit that the game between Essex and Missisquoi on February 27th is now thought to be a vector for the virus to have spread from the Missisquoi team to the Essex boys hockey team.
“We are aware of the Missisquoi hockey team, and another team that was affected by [Missisquoi]” Levine said, “this is an example… of more community transmission… there does appear to be community transmission across teams. That’s the only time we’ve seen that so far.”
Levine later confirmed to the County Courier that the second team was Essex.
Levine said that although there are cases related to the two Hockey teams, there are also cases throughout both communities that are unrelated to the hockey teams.
“[Missisquoi] has, as a high school, been much more extraordinarily impacted by the virus than we’ve seen in other schools in the state,” Levine said.
The ironic part of the February 27th matchup- Missisquoi had originally been scheduled to play Lyndon on February 27th, but Lyndon canceled their season just before that game due to the virus.
Looking for any opponent, D-II Missisquoi linked up with what would end up being the top seed in D-I, Essex High School to compete in Highgate.
At the time, the notion by most participants was that any opponent was better than having to sit on the sidelines and not play at all. Essex would go on to defeat Missisquoi 3-1.
On Thursday, the Vermont Principals Association announced the playoff pairings for hockey, but to date, at least four teams have already had to forfeit their bid at a championship.
Fourth-seeded South Burlington was forced to withdraw from the D-I boys tournament, as well as third-seeded Rice.
South Burlington had been planning to host fifth-seeded Woodstock, but Woodstock will now get a guaranteed bid into the semi-final later this week.
Rice was set to host CVU on Wednesday, but with Rice bowing out of tournament play, CVU advances to the semifinal to play the winner of tomorrow’s #2 BFA St. Albans and #10 Stowe matchup.
With Dr. Levine’s announcement on Tuesday that the Essex boys hockey team is also facing covid spread, many are waiting with bated breath on an announcement on the future of that program in the post-season.
As it stands now, the D-I boys tournament has yet to play the quarterfinals, but is down to just six teams, assuming Essex will have enough players to participate in tomorrow’s game against ninth-seeded Colchester.
That leaves (#1) Essex, (#2) BFA St. Albans, (#5) Woodstock, (#6) CVU, and (#9) Colchester in that portion of the Vermont Principals’ Association tournament.
As for D-II girls hockey, Missisquoi had to bow out of the tournament early. It is yet to be determined if any other teams in that bracket will be chopped from the tournament.
In the DI girls hockey bracket, The Kingdom Blades were scheduled to take on Rice at Jay Peak last night at Jay Peak. The school was forced to throw in the towel just hours before the puck drop.
Rice advanced to the quarterfinals on Saturday, where they will take on Essex for a slot in the Championship game.
