Virus Toyed with Huskies for a Few Weeks Before Full-blown Outbreak

The UW football team was able to play against Utah and Stanford after singular, isolated cases turned up. Everything multiplied after that.

Twenty University of Washington offensive linemen fill up the roster.

Zero are available.

None were able to play in the Pac-12 championship game against USC on Friday. 

Each player either produced a positive COVID-19 test or were exposed and went in quarantine.

That includes all scholarship and walk-on linemen.

Such is the world of the 2020 pandemic that won't go away soon enough. 

"Our team, the members who have tested positive, are doing well," Husky coach Jimmy Lake said. "They have mild symptoms and nothing extremely serious, and that's really what I want the focus to be first and foremost, that it's always been about the safety of our players and our staff.

"Thankfully, they're on the road to recovery and we're anxious to get those guys back here soon."

The UW football team's first positive virus cases during the season were singular and isolated, and showed up the day prior to the Utah game held on Nov. 28, according to head trainer Rob Scheidegger.

The situation was manageable. Players with the virus were separated from the others. The team continued to move forward. The Huskies overcame a 21-0 halftime deficit to beat the Utes 24-21.

More cases appeared the following week leading up the Dec. 5 game against Stanford. Yet the positive tests were still individual situations and the players were separated and put in quarantine. The Huskies lost that game, 31-26.

That UW-Stanford match-up never appeared in doubt, but clearly more Husky players had become unavailable. 

Move to Tuesday of last week and the situation escalated to the point the UW found multiple cases, some bunched in position areas.

The school had no choice but to shut down all football activities, hoping to play Saturday's Oregon game in Eugene. 

Things got worse, not better. There's no surefire way for eluding this infectious disease right now as it spikes nationwide.

"This virus is spreading across the whole country," Lake said. "It seems like it doesn't cherry-pick where it's going to go or where it's not going to go. It goes everywhere."

The Huskies needs consecutive days of negative testing before it can resume practice and Lake's team simply didn't have enough time to make that happen before Friday's game. Hence the cancellation.

"There are cases everywhere right now and the most effective way to prevent continued spread is to identify positive cases and isolate them as quickly as possible," Scheidegger said. "We reached a point where we couldn't continue to do that."

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