With cases of COVID-19 climbing nearly every day, impacts are being felt in all walks of life. From places of business, to events, to sports, changes are being made, schedules rewritten and more. 

For student-athletes, the impacts are being felt in two places – within the classroom, and on the court. This includes high school students at Weyburn Comprehensive School, where a number of changes to schedules and routines have been made in recent days due to COVID-19.  

“We’ve had kids in and out, some positives and some tracing, and there’s been a bit of a headache, definitely, for coaches to try to figure out who they actually have to practice and to play on the weekends,” explained Jody Kerr, the athletics director at WCS. This includes the senior girls’ basketball team at the school, which was unable to attend a tournament last week due to COVID-19.  

In addition to the almost daily changes to the availability of certain players, teams are also dealing with schedules from other places, as they often travel for tournaments on the weekends. 

“We have seen some tournaments that our teams were going to travel to being cancelled from their home divisions or their home schools out of safety for their teams and their players,” Kerr added. One of those areas is Moose Jaw, where the Prairie South School Division has suspended travel for sports teams, and hosting tournaments. 

Despite the issues, there is an effort in Weyburn to keep things running as well as they can. The intermediate boys’ basketball team will be hosting a tournament at WCS this weekend. There were some schedule changes, though, as instead of having nine teams attending, there will now just be four teams taking part with the other schools withdrawing for various reasons. 

With a number of sports underway at this time of year, only one has been particularly impacted at WCS. 

“For us, basketball is kind of the big one right now, and with the amount of kids playing and crossing over teams and a few grades playing together, stuff like that, it’s difficult,” Kerr said.  

One event that the school is hoping will still be a go is the annual McLeod Series. The four-game, total point series between the senior boys’ and senior girls’ basketball teams from WCS and Estevan Comprehensive School is still tentatively scheduled for later this winter. More details on what the annual event, which was cancelled last year due to COVID-19, are expected to be released in the coming weeks.