Duke football pauses spring practice due to COVID-19 cluster within its program
A cluster of COVID-19 has caused Duke to pause its spring football practice.
The school announced the cluster, which means there are five or more positive cases, on Tuesday after the program had postponed two scheduled practice sessions last Friday and Saturday.
The school said 10 students, who attended team activities together, are in isolation. All team activities are paused indefinitely. In addition, contact tracing has identified others who may have been in close contact with a COVID-19 person.
Duke notified the Durham County Health Department about the cluster.
While going 2-9 last season, Duke did not have to pause its practices nor did it miss any games due to positive COVID-19 cases within its program. The Blue Devils did have their schedule altered by COVID-19 issues at other ACC schools, including a game with Wake Forest that was canceled.
Duke started spring practice on Feb. 26. In the team’s third practice on March 3, the players used full pads for the first time this spring. That day the Blue Devils started with special teams work on an outdoor practice field before moving indoors for positional and team work at the Pascal Field House.
But that’s the last day the team was able to practice. They had been scheduled to practice last Friday and Saturday before taking a break and resuming practice on Wednesday.
The NCAA allows teams to hold 15 spring football practice sessions. Duke had scheduled its spring showcase event for March 27 with its final spring practice set for March 31.
The school’s campus COVID-19 dashboard, updated every Tuesday, showed 53 active cases among the student body and four active cases among faculty and staff. It also lists 142 students and nine faculty and staff members in precautionary quarantine, meaning they were identified through contact tracing or have voluntarily reported they are quarantining due to symptoms, possible exposure, travel or family circumstances.
This story was originally published March 9, 2021 at 4:16 PM.