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Six members of the Southampton varsity boys basketball team are currently in a 10-day quarantine.
Half of the Southampton boys basketball team was in a 10-day quarantine after a single player tested positive for COVID-19, requiring a few of the Mariners’ games and scrimmages to be postponed.
Southampton Athletic Director Darren Phillips confirmed on December 8 that one varsity player tested positive resulting in five additional players also having to quarantine after contact tracing. The quarantine was pushed back to when the positive test occurred, he said, so the team was expected to return to the court as early as this past Tuesday. Southampton’s nonleague game against Westhampton Beach was pushed back to this Friday, December 17, at home at 7 p.m. and its game at Center Moriches was rescheduled for December 21 at 6:15 p.m., its final game before the holiday break.
This is the second quarantine for the Mariners in the calendar year. They had another positive case during the pandemic-shortened season in February that ended their chances of being able to qualify for what would have been an abrupt postseason. Both Phillips and head coach Herm Lamison said protocols are being followed correctly at practice and at games, but both acknowledged it’s impossible to know what’s going on outside of school.
“These things happen and are pretty much out of your control,” Lamison said. “You can get this virus if you’re masked, if you’re not masked, if you’re vaccinated, if you’re not vaccinated. This is how this disease operates — everyone is susceptible and it picks and chooses who it latches on to and this is pretty much what has happened here.
“I know there are schools who are in a lot worse situation than we are,” he added. “We’re thankful that things will be put back into place sooner rather than later.”
Phillips said he compiles reports of positive COVID cases for each building and said there is nothing close to an outbreak happening in Southampton, with two cases at most being reported in any one of the district’s buildings. He did mention that it would be interesting to see if any of that changes with the holidays approaching and noted that following, protocols will continue to be imperative.
“Masks are a big deal,” he said. “Now we haven’t had a home game yet, but Section XI has talked about how there are some schools and teams out there who are being too lax on the masks. Masks are now required, not just spectators but for the players also. The officials can stop the game and call it if the rule is not being followed.”
Lamison said it’s very difficult for athletes to wear masks while playing sports. He mentioned it’s now being looked into whether wearing a mask contributed to the death of Copiague sophomore Carmyne Paschall Payton, who collapsed and died last month after running laps during basketball tryouts.
That being said, Lamison said his players are wearing masks “as best they can.”
“We do the best we can with the protocols that are in place, without potentially violating anything,” Lamison said. “These things just happen. I’m just praying the kids are going to be okay so when they come back they can get back to basketball and have a decent season. We have a lot of seniors who lost their junior year, lost so much time on the court and really growing up as a teenager.”
The Mariners are 1-1 thus far in the early going, having split their games in the Kings Park Tip-Off Tournament on December 3-4. After losing, 70-67, to Commack, they turned around and defeated Wyandanch, 96-77.
Lamison said another sad part to the quarantine was that he felt the team was getting into a good groove, but having it happen earlier in the season rather than later is certainly a positive.
“We’ve experienced both sides of the coin now. The good thing is that I thought we’ve really worked on a lot up until this point, things that we sometimes don’t even get to until January,” he explained. “We’re at about 80 to 90 percent of what we’ve needed to really work on. That’s just been doing repetitive work and working out the kinks. Hopefully, we’ll come back next week and hit the ground running.
“It’s early and early is good,” Lamison added. “Early is better than late.”
