COVID-19 forces Raiders to cancel second straight game
Laurens RB Zy Todd (1) looks for yardage earlier this season at River Bluff. The Raiders will miss a second-straight region game due to COVID-19 protocols within the program.
Laurens District High School has been forced to cancel its varsity football game for the second straight week due to COVID-19 protocols within the program.
About significant percentage of the Raiders’ roster has either tested positive for COVID-19 or has been quarantined. Those numbers include two entire position groups, forcing the cancellations against Greenwood this past Friday night and Greenville this coming Friday.
“We’re just going to practice this week with what we’ve got and play our JV game,” said LDHS head coach Daryl Smith.
The Raiders (2-3) were able to play their home opener against Union County with a depleted roster of 30 players, which included several JV players called up for the game.
Smith said that wasn’t an option this time around.
“We have a lot of 9th graders on the JV team, and we felt like it wouldn’t be fair to ask them to play on a Friday night against seniors,” he said.
Due to the cancellations, LDHS will play a maximum of two games in Region 2-4A. Eastside and Greer remain on the Raiders’ region schedule along with non-conference opponent White Knoll. Putting Greenwood or Greer in the White Knoll slot is impossible because both those teams have region contests scheduled for that date.
Smith said LDHS does not have to forfeit the two games it will have missed but getting wins over Eastside and Greer now becomes imperative if the Raiders are to have any chance to make the playoffs. The first tie-breaker for playoff consideration is the number of region wins.
