Cal Poly football team pauses three-week training camp due to COVID concerns
Cal Poly’s football team has paused its practices due to COVID-19 concerns.
The university issued a brief statement in an email on Wednesday night noting: “Football practice is currently paused due to COVID-19 concerns. Pending test results, practice could resume next week.”
The Mustangs are scheduled to start their season on Feb. 27 in an away game against rival UC Davis, followed by two home games on March 6 against Weber State and March 13 against Southern Utah.
Cal Poly and seven other Big Sky teams have decided to proceed with the abbreviated winter season and will play six games each in a modified schedule.
Montana, Montana State, Portland State and Northern Colorado joined Sacramento State to sit out this year’s season, which will be played in the coning months instead of the fall.
Cal Poly officials didn’t say if any players or coaches have tested positive for COVID-19 during the current break.
The Mustangs were in training camp
The team opened a three-week training camp on Jan. 29 in preparation for its season, which that was delayed from its traditional fall season due to pandemic protocols.
The Mustangs last played a game on Nov. 23, 2019, and first-year head coach Beau Baldwin, hired in December 2019, has yet to see his first contest with the program.
In the fall, at least four Mustang football players were among other local college athletes at Cal Poly to test positive for coronavirus, a source at the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department told The Tribune in November.
At Cal Poly, “a small number of student-athletes have tested positive this quarter,” Matt Lazier, the San Luis Obispo university’s director of media relations, wrote in an email to The Tribune, in November.
He added that “privacy laws prevent the university from identifying which specific teams or team members might be affected.”
In addition, five members of Cuesta College’s baseball team also tested positive for COVID-19 in the fall, according to Ritchie Bermudez, the community college’s associate director of marketing and communications.
The Cougar baseball team suspended all in-person meetings until Nov. 18, Bermudez said then, and players who tested positive for the virus were in isolation.
This story was originally published February 11, 2021 at 11:02 AM with the headline "Cal Poly football team pauses three-week training camp due to COVID concerns."
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