Newburyport High football game vs. North Reading canceled

Mac Cerullo, The Daily News of Newburyport, Mass.
·2 min read

Apr. 13—This Friday's Newburyport High football game against North Reading has been canceled due to COVID-19 protocols at Newburyport, the school announced on Tuesday.

The decision was initially announced on the Newburyport Athletics Twitter page, and Newburyport athletic director Kyle Hodsdon confirmed that the school is concerned about a possible COVID-19 case within the program.

Hodsdon added that he doesn't believe the football team's pause will last for more than a couple of days, but with Friday's game so close they felt canceling the game would be the best decision for all involved.

"We have some reason to think we may have a positive case so we want to make sure we're safe with this," Hodsdon said. "If we lose a couple of days here it wouldn't be in our best interest to play Friday night, so we had to make the tough decision but it's in the best interest of our team and North Reading."

Newburyport High currently takes part in pool testing and all athletes are tested mid-week. Hodsdon said results usually come back in a couple of days, so as long as no additional issues pop up the team could be cleared for a full week of practice leading up to next week's season finale at Amesbury.

"Things are expedited now with the way we test and get results, so we're fairly confident this will be a short pause and we will be back at it this weekend," he said.

Newburyport and North Reading were both 3-2 heading into the weekend's scheduled matchup, which marked the penultimate week of the condensed Fall 2 football season. The game was originally set to kick off at 5 p.m., but now Newburyport will look ahead to its season finale against Amesbury on April 23.