For the third time this season, a Clermont County football program has been forced to stop activities due to a positive COVID test.

West Clermont High School has been forced to cancel two games, this week’s contest against Kings and next week’s non-league bout against Sycamore. The news of this week’s cancelation was posted on Twitter by the Kings athletic department.

Head coach Nick Ayers said the program learned about the test on Thursday morning (September 24). By that point, students had already arrived at the school.

“We notified the 29 other players that were in contact,” Ayers said. “We got ahold of them within the hour. They had to go to the quarantine room, there were so many of them that they had to go to the gymnasium.”

Once there, the quarantined students were either told to wait for their parents or to wait until they were given permission to drive home, according to Ayers. Data posted on West Clermont’s COVID-19 Dashboard says a total of 50 students and one staff member are confirmed to be in quarantine for the week of September 21-25.

The players weren’t too thrilled when told about the news of the two-week quarantine, according to Ayers. The team does not plan on withdrawing from the playoffs, with Ayers noting the program expects to return on a Wednesday and have one day of practice before opening the postseason.

“They’ve been working so hard,” Ayers said. “We thought we were doing everything we could. Daily temperature checks, symptom checks, social distancing, masks…we’ve followed every protocol possible. For them to get canceled the day before a televised game…it was pretty disappointing to a lot of them.”

Unlike the two previous instances of a positive case shutting down a Clermont County football program, the Wolves received the news on a Thursday morning. Batavia received word on a Thursday night and Milford on a Friday afternoon. That added time helped the Wolves and Eastern Cincinnati Conference foe Kings.

“It helped us in taking care of Kings,” Ayers said. “Our athletic director called them, they were very understanding. They went through it. They were very understanding and supportive of us. That’s just how the ECC is, all the schools are supportive of one another.”

West Clermont’s game against the Knights was supposed to air across the state on SpectrumSports. Kings instead will travel to Teays Valley.