COVID-19 positivity rate for Michigan’s winter prep sports at .325%, but wrestling coaches still on edge

A feeling of dread has greeted R.J. Boudro every morning when he rolls out of bed for the last month, and the seventh-year Lowell wrestling coach is hardly alone.

The 2021 high school wrestling season has been a nerve wracking one for coaches around the state, who know that one ill-timed positive COVID-19 test could derail months — sometimes years — of hard work.

When the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reinstated the winter season’s high school contact sports on Feb. 4, it required the state’s wrestlers to take a rapid antigen COVID-19 test on competition days without exception.

Wrestlers that came in close contact with the COVID-19-positive individual are subjected to a 10-day quarantine, and in a season that had already been reduced from 13 weeks to seven, every match carries more weight.

“I kind of wake up with a pit in my stomach almost every day because I’m afraid of what’s going to happen, and that’s a shame, but it’s getting easier and easier with the more of that buy-in that we get and as I understand some of the things that we can do (to limit the risk of testing positive),” Boudro said. “I think we’re doing the right things to mitigate those chances of getting sick or spreading it or getting contact traced. The more I’m with the guys, it’s like the pit in my stomach goes away when I entered the wrestling room because I get to be with the guys, and I think that the same for a lot of kids, too.”

Boudro’s Lowell squad has had two players miss competition days due to contact tracing within the high school, but the Red Arrows have yet to produce a positive COVID-19 test, and the team is far from the exception.

As of March 2, 28,888 tests have been administered to 6,355 winter contact sports participants, and 94 tests came back positive, though a spokesperson for the MDHHS said two of those results could be false positives.

Even if the number of positive cases sits at 94, the negativity rate is 99.675 percent, which is close to the 99.8 percent negativity rate from the MDHHS’s COVID-19 January pilot testing program for student-athletes competing in the football, volleyball and girls swimming playoffs.

Since the MDHHS doesn’t separate test results by sport, the 99.675 negativity rate includes all winter sports athletes, but a state health department spokesperson said the vast majority of those tests are from wrestlers, as that is the only sport that requires athletes to submit COVID-19 tests before every competition.

The MDHHS has also offered schools one rapid antigen test per athlete per week for the other winter contact sports, in which masks can be worn during competition.

The state health department deemed wearing masks during competition unfeasible for wrestling, but coaches and athletes must wear masks in practice and while not on the mat during meets.

Other safety measures, such as frequent sanitation of wrestlers and wrestling mats, aren’t anything new for programs that have been diligent about reducing the risk of skin infections during normal seasons, but coaches have adapted the practices to reduce the risk of the coronavirus spreading throughout the entire team.

At Lowell, Boudro has been dividing his practice up into small groups, and when the Red Arrows travel to away meets, the athletes ride with their parents, not on a team bus.

“We wrestle in pods, so we try to limit the exposure of wrestlers if we can help it, so you’ll only be exposed to certain guys on the team,” Boudro said. “To be honest with you, in wrestling we’ve always been very serious about if you’re sick, don’t come, showering, washing hands, sanitizing, mopping our mats — it’s really like nothing has changed in that regard.

“Wrestling’s been fortunate in that we’ve been focused on those things all the time, so we’re preaching the same things we always have, but the mask wearing is something that’s different across the state.”

Across the state at Dundee, the three-time defending Division 3 state champ Vikings are using the pod practice system, but they also have an assistant coach who is responsible for sanitizing wrestlers every time the get off the mat.

“As soon as we complete live matches, we have a coach that’s designated to use cleaning wipes to wipe the person down immediately, just in case there are any germs lingering that we can get on top of it right away,” head coach Tim Roberts said.

While the frequent sanitizing isn’t new, the daily lives of wrestlers is far different than previous seasons, with coaches asking their athletes to consider how every decision they make off campus can affect the team.

“The requests from us have been basically to really keep in mind that every time you’re going out, it’s another chance (to contract COVID-19),” said Roberts, whose team has had two wrestlers spend time in quarantine due to contact tracing within the school, but has yet to produce a positive test. “Whenever they’re talking about wanting to get together and go to a restaurant because we were in a situation where restaurants in Michigan weren’t open for that long, and then they opened, and people want to get out and enjoy this stuff — really think about that.

“We’re really encouraging them to ask themselves if they really need to do this right now. After the season, you can do all that stuff, but right now, is it worth it to take those extra chances of being there? You just never know when you might be exposed, and so we’re just really encouraging them to take all that in mind, and, again, encouraging the parents as well, because you can tell your athlete, what he needs to do, and then you can go out and get it yourself as a parent, and that doesn’t help.”

At Hudson, where the Tigers have competed in the Division 4 state championship match the last 12 seasons, head coach Scott Marry said many of his wrestlers have elected to take virtual classes to reduce the risk of getting the virus or coming in close contact with some that tests positive, while others are trying to create social distance in the classroom.

“We’re not going to impose that on them, but some of them have chosen to go virtual, so they’re not even around the other students, and then we sent out an email asking all their teachers to allow the wrestlers to be in their own pod in the classroom, so if there’s two or three wrestlers in a classroom, those two or three could sit off to the side by themselves just to kind of keep them kind of away from everybody,” Marry said.

At Lowell, which is looking to extend its state record with the Red Arrows’ eighth consecutive Division 2 title, Boudro said he and his assistants are asking a lot of his athletes, but thinks most of them understand the reward will be worth the sacrifice.

“It feels like we’re asking for a lot because we want them to hang out with only the guys on the team, and we’re trying to limit the family gatherings and them hanging out with different friends outside of our wrestling team, so I think to a high school kid, that’s asking a lot, but I think they understand the opportunity that they have, and that the sacrifice will be worth it,” Boudro said.

As the state’s only sport that requires COVID-19 testing, positive cases are unlikely to slide under the radar, and that puts pressure on not only the athletes, but also their families, to do their best to steer clear of the virus.

Boudro said the responses up to this point have been have been supportive of his requests.

“I think everybody’s been extremely on board,” he said. “It might be unique to Lowell, but I haven’t heard any complaints.”

Unlike Lowell, traditional Southwest Michigan wrestling power Mendon is going through a rebuilding year after graduating an abundance of talent, including four-time individual state champ Skyler Crespo, but Hornets head coach Caleb Stephenson said the buy-in from his athletes and their families has been “100 percent.”

“We’ve got some first-year kids, some second-year kids, and they understand that they might not be a state champ this year, but we have guys in the room that are trying to chase that, so they’re watching out for them,” Stephenson said. “That’s what I mean by that team and community effort. It’s about having that respect for one another.”

Dundee’s Roberts, who has led the Vikings to eight state championships in his two decades atop the program, said he has heard some complaints from kids and their families about how they spend their time off school grounds, but at the end of the day, he said he feels lucky they see the bigger picture.

“There have been some grumblings because they’re kids, and they’re in the same boat of wanting to get out and start living again just like everybody else that’s been in this situation, but they also understand,” Roberts said. “I feel fortunate they’ve looked at it in the bigger picture of how much training they’ve put into this sport and the opportunity to get to complete what they’ve done their training for, rather than having to go to a restaurant that day.”

While Dundee, Lowell, Mendon and Hudson have yet to produce a positive test, not all wrestling programs have been as lucky.

Otisville LakeVille Memorial in Genesee County had at least 20 wrestlers test positive in February after competing in out of state tournaments in Wisconsin and Ohio, sending the team into a quarantine period from Feb. 11 to March 1.

RELATED: Health officials suspect wrestling events may have sparked COVID-19 outbreak at LakeVille High School

Under Michigan High School Athletic Association rules, wrestlers can compete in up to two non-school events during the season, and LakeVille Memorial athletic director Clayton Strobridge said the out-of-state tournaments in which his athletes participated only screened wrestlers for a fever prior to competition.

“At the school, I can’t stop parents from taking their kids places, and as the athletic director, I can’t stop the youth program,” Strobridge said. “We’ve met with the youth program, and we’ve been very open… With the youth program, what we did just in case parents wanted to do that was shut down our facilities to everybody outside the varsity team.”

The extended quarantine postponed the start of LakeVille Memorial’s season to March 5, and the Falcons will have a maximum of five weeks to compete, including the team and individual state finals.

Strobridge said the health department’s COVID-19 testing program is “the safest way possible to have the sport,” and MHSAA spokesperson Geoff Kimmerly said the low positivity rate not only validates the decision to test wrestlers, but also speaks to the athletes’ willingness to take all precautions during the season.

“The MDHHS has provided some amazing tools with testing, and our wrestlers obviously have shown they’re taking this very seriously by remaining virus-free, for the most part, and doing the right things, which is really similar to what we saw with the testing results from the fall sports, also,” KImmerly said. “People want to play, and they want to do the right things, and, yeah, we hear of cases popping up here and there, but people are doing the right things even then and going into quarantine and getting healthy before they go into competition again.”

Being able to go into a wrestling meet confident that his athletes are unlikely to acquire the coronavirus through competition is a reassuring feeling said Mendon’s Stephenson.

“It makes us all feel better that when we show up somewhere, all these other teams have tested negative, too,” he said. “It kind of gives you a little breath of fresh air, knowing that the likelihood that there’s an issue on another team is extremely low.”

Still, it’s hard for coaches like Hudson’s Scott Marry to remain worry-free, especially when the team playoffs are scheduled to start on March 17, and any quarantine this late in the season could mean an abrupt end.

“This is by far the most stressful season of my 33 years — there’s no two ways about it,” said Marry, whose team is ranked No. 2 in Division 4. “I have a pretty good team, and we’re very capable of making some noise in the postseason, but we’re just one test away, and you get tested two times a week.

“But at the same time, it’s a shortened season, so that kind of does help as far as the stress goes because we have four weeks left, and then we’re finished, so it’s not like we’re looking at three months of doing this.”