Michigan State University ordered all of its soccer players to be quarantined after an athlete and two program employees tested positive for the coronavirus, officials said Friday.
The school did not identify the athlete or soccer staff members who tested positive.
“According to initial results of COVID-19 tests conducted over the past week on soccer staff and student athletes, which included a second staff member and a student-athlete student who tested positive on Thursday, all members of the soccer team will be quarantined or isolated, pending the completion of a 14-day quarantine, “MSU said in a statement.
“As part of the athletic department’s return policy to campus, student athletes are quarantined when they come into close contact with a COVID-19 positive person.”
The school did not reveal exactly how many athletes are now quarantined, but a spokesman for the athletics department said it would be a “majority” of the team that had returned to campus.
A soccer team in the NCAA football subdivision includes 85 scholarship players.
The quarantine abruptly halted Spartans training and preseason meetings, which could last up to 20 hours a week under NCAA rules, for a 2020 season that has big doubts that it will happen.
The Big Ten Conference announced earlier this month that it would not be playing out-of-league contests this season, assuming there is a roster of games in the fall. The pandemic forced the Pacific-12 Conference to take similar steps.
It also led to the closure of virtually all top-tier sports worldwide in mid-March, including the highly popular and profitable NCAA Annual Basketball Tournament.
