The Florida State Seminoles’ home meet against Texas A&M, which was scheduled to take place on January 6th, has been canceled due to COVID-19.
In a press release regarding the decision, FSU wrote that “with the postseason on the horizon, Thursday’s meet has been canceled due to the recent spread of COVID-19 around the country.”
This is Florida State’s second missed meet of the season. A scheduled November meet between Florida State and the Florida Gators. The meet was canceled in November due to non-COVID-19 related illness.
Texas A&M and the University of Florida were also set to compete on January 8th, but that meet has also been canceled.
On January 3, 2022, NBC Miami reported that the state recorded over 85,000 cases of COVID-19 over the new-year weekend. The week prior, Florida reported more than 50,000 cases of the virus for 4-straight days including 75,902 on December 30, 2021. Florida reported 32 COVID-19-related deaths between December 24 and December 30, 2021.
Nationally, there has been an incline in COVID-19 cases over the past few days, including a total of 1,017,376 reported cases on January 3, 2022, according to the New York Times. That is a rate of 147 cases per 100,000 over the last 2 weeks – the highest rate of the pandemic so far.
In addition to these 3 meets between Florida State, Texas A&M, and the University of Florida, another few NCAA meets have been canceled this week. Penn State vs Army and Auburn vs Georgia Tech, and the FIU Sprint Invite, which were scheduled for January 7 and 8, respectively, were both canceled.
The Penn State v Army meet was canceled due to a positive COVID-19 result from a Penn State swimmer. According to the press release from the team, the meet will not be rescheduled. The school also wrote that any contacts of that positive athlete have been put into isolation.
With just over a month to go until conference championship meets, any outbreaks within a team now could mean a loss of several days of training for multiple swimmers.
As cancelations grow within the NCAA, USA Swimming made a similar call recently when they canceled the first stop of the 2022 TYR Pro Swim Series. The first meet was set to take place in Knoxville, Tennessee from January 12 – 15, 2022.
This is what happens when people do not vaccinate and wear masks as asked. Hope it was worth it.
Israel is onto a 4th jab amidst high vax rates.TBH I don’t know if Palestinians are counted or where they fit in .but everywhere else sth of the Med is not affected too much. It seems to skip over a huge continent till SA.
ha ha ha
Are college football teams (Alabama and Georgia for instance) have the same testing protocols as swimming and other sports?
I cannot say with certainty that every college is applying the same policies to all teams – we saw, for example, that FINA didn’t apply policies equally across federations.
That being said, the policy, per se, doesn’t necessarily mean the cancellation. Sometimes, it can be a convenient excuse to avoid more infections from a long trip. Sometimes it’s a risk-reward calculation.
Is Georgia going to skip the NCAA Championship football game because of a few COVID cases? Absolutely not. Are swim teams willing to cancel a dual meet because of a few COVID cases? Probably.
We as a community have been shouting for a century about how little dual meets matter. We can’t now pretend like they do because we… Read more »
Every swimmer I know at FSU was posting all kinds of clubbing on NYE… no surprise to see these cancellations.
That’s crazy… I literally saw the same thing with all of the TAMU swimmers on NYE 👀
I’m surprised The Free State of Florida’s public universities are even allowed to cancel meets due to covid. 🙄
can’t do much if the team that’s coming to town isn’t coming (assuming that’s why FSU & UF meets were cancelled, if TAMU isn’t making the trip)
From reading the article, not too sure that it was A&M that wasn’t willing to go (it was an FSU press release & not an A&M press release) but the outbreak of COVID in Florida no doubt influenced that decision (& I’m for whatever is best for swimmers on all teams at this point)👍👍
Both teams are pointing the finger at the other team. So, it’s not really entirely clear who decided to cancel the meet.
TAMU just posted a pic of the team axe throwing at someplace that looks like a group event?
Swimmers need to stick together and stand up! We want to swim!
If they have covid they probably shouldn’t stick together….
I think we’re headed to an NCAAs and conference meets where entire teams are missing or half rosters show up. Trying to keep a combined team in the water during this surge is going to be more of a challenge than anything else at this point.
The only reason I’d disagree with that is that I think that most teams are going to be hit well before their conference/NCAA meets, complete their quarantine, and be back.
Full strength after missing a week of training? Maybe not. But I think they’ll be there.
Maybe at the Division III level more than Division I, but plenty of schools are sticking with the old CDC guidelines and continuing to follow a 10 day quarantine. That, coupled with the 4 day NCAA return to play guidelines, put you closer to a two week disruption…or at least 2 weeks until a return to competition.
A number of programs and Universities are now considering fully vaccinated when you get the booster. If you have had a booster and are a close contact, surveillance testing and negative PCRs will keep from having to quarantine. (At least that’s what I’m hearing from my 3) Also, some schools are adopting the 5 day isolation with a negative test at the end of the 5 days. I’m keeping fingers crossed that for vaccinated athletes they feel better within a couple days and test negative quickly. That seems to be the way it’s trending at the schools my kids are at. Sick 2-3 days, feeling good enough to practice again after 5-6 days and just waiting on the negative test… Read more »
Nah. This wave will peak sometime mid-January.
I would guess that a large portion of these swim programs are in the process of contracting this recent variant completing the quarantine (5 days) and getting it behind them. And frankly – the sooner, the better.
No way this is going on in February/March.
Hearing the entire Kentucky team is out of the pool for at least a week due to covid concerns
I have first hand knowledge that is not true at all. Check your sources.
So.. we just going to be done? Last year proved how to run meets with covid
This is giving March 2020 deja vu and I hate it