By Brian Argabright
Del Rio High students involved in UIL activities will be kept away from the fields, courts, practice halls and theaters for the next two weeks.
The San Felipe Del Rio CISD issued a release that announced all UIL and extra-curricular activities, including games, competitions and practices, would be suspended temporarily for the next two weeks beginning Wednesday. The suspension of activities is due to the spike in COVID-19 cases in Val Verde County.
UIL activities were suspended in March statewide for what was initially a two-week period. That suspension eventually resulted in a cancelation of all spring sports and a postponement of summer strength and conditioning activities. Activities did not resume until September, and that was only at the varsity level.
According to Superintendent Dr. Carlos Rios, he met with Del Rio High School Principal Dr. Jose Perez and San Felipe Del Rio CISD Athletic Director Ric Smith and they reached the decision to suspend activities. Rios confirmed that it is not a state mandate, nor a UIL mandate.
“Here’s what’s going to happen moving forward. There are two things that need to happen before we resume activities. First, the positivity rate in the community has to decrease to the levels it was at prior to the Christmas break. Hopefully we get the notice that the positivity rate is decreasing,” Rios said. “The next thing that will happen is that three days before practice resumes we will be holding antigen testing for our kids in UIL activities to determine if any of them are positive. The only bad thing about the antigen test is that it doesn’t necessarily pick up everybody that is positive. You can test negative and still be a carrier and be contagious, but it will still give us some indication as to where we are in regards to cases.”
Rios was unable to provide a percentage of students in UIL activities that have tested positive for COVID-19 this school year, but shared that in the last few days several students at the high school had been tested and came up positive.
“Sometimes students have a slight headache or other symptoms and they don’t recognize them as COVID. Some had parents at home that were positive and still came to school,” Rios said. “Within one program we had two students that tested positive, so that’s significant. That plus the positivity rate in our community just a lot.”
Rios said there are currently no plans in place beyond the current two-week hiatus. He said he and his leadership team would take things “day-by-day” and would make any additional decisions when the time is necessary.
“We currently have no plans beyond that. Right now we just need to make sure that our students are safe,” Rios said. “Even though we have a lot of protocols in place they won’t be enough to counter the high positivity rate in the community. These are contact sports. We can expect with a high degree of certainty that students will be generally safe, but even with all the protocols in place it’s just a really risky situation.”
