Mountain Pine has positive COVID-19 test in athletic department

MOUNTAIN PINE — Mountain Pine School District suspended all athletic workouts for 14 days on Monday after an unidentified person linked to the athletic program tested positive for COVID-19.

Mountain Pine athletic director James Galarza declined to identify the person on Thursday.

“Well, we prefer not to really say because we’re such a small community,” Galarza said. “We don’t want any type of derogatory things, such as social media or something like that to get out that could harm the particular person. Like I said, unfortunately, whether it was a staff or an athlete, this is something that we’re going to have to face, it looks like, especially if the schools open back up in a traditional way of any sort, and if athletics continues in a normal fashion, I think we’ll see a lot more of this. Everybody, including us, is really uncertain how this is going to play out, so to speak.”

The district announced Monday on social media that all athletic practices were canceled for 14 days after someone was potentially exposed to the virus.

A post on the school’s Facebook page on Tuesday morning said that a person tested positive for the virus and encouraged “all student-athletes (in grades 7-12) who have been on campus be tested.”

“We had a person that notified us that they were going to take a test,” Galarza said. “They believed they were exposed. … Even with all the precautions, or the Department of Health guidelines, we’ve worn masks; we’ve washed, sanitized, took temperatures and recorded all the people that came in contact as well for documentation, but unfortunately, we did have somebody that had it, and the test came back positive.”

Athletes, coaches and staff must be screened with a digital thermometer prior to any activity and answer questions if they’ve had a fever of 100.4 degrees or greater in the past two days, had a cough, difficulty breathing, a sore throat or a loss of taste or smell, or have had contact with a person known to be infected with COVID-19 within the previous 14 days in order to work out or practice. The guidelines were set by the Arkansas Department of Health in conjunction with Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s office May 21.

A Jonesboro High School football player was the first-known high school football player in the state to test positive for coronavirus on June 15.

Galarza said that with such a small school, the district has had to close its doors in the past due to a large number of flu cases, leading to additional cleaning that helped the district prepare for this kind of situation.

“Even before this coronavirus shut down the schools and we had several flu epidemics where we had to shut down for a day or two for the flu, our superintendent has really been on top of things as far as if we close the school, we clean,” he said. “Teachers have been up there, back from the flu. Our janitors have put extra time in. We’ve had extra donations of Lysol wipes and things like that. All that being said, we have the masks, we have the temperature, we’ve had to turn some student-athletes back and not allow them to participate in volunteer workouts because their temperature was over the allowed mark, so we feel like we’ve done everything, and some, already that was asked of us.”

Practices at Mountain Pine are anticipated to resume on July 7. Athletic directors at Fountain Lake, Hot Springs, Cutter Morning Star, Jessieville and Lakeside said that there had been no positive tests for any athletes or coaches at their districts. Messages left for Lake Hamilton’s athletic director were unanswered at presstime.