Maryland has canceled Saturday’s home game with Ohio State after eight Terrapins football players tested positive for COVID-19 in the last seven days.
The Buckeyes-Terrapins matchup, the third Big Ten game called off this season, will not be rescheduled, officials said, and is the latest of a slew of college games yanked off this weekend’s schedule due to the pandemic.
Maryland athletic director Damon Evans and university President Darryl Pines made the joint decision to cancel after a recommendation from university health officials. The Big Ten Conference was also consulted.
According to a testing update provided by the school, 1,510 on-campus PCR screening tests were administered to athletes across all sports between Sept. 30 and Nov. 10. Of those tests, 10 came back positive, including the eight from the football team within the last seven days.
With roughly 550 athletes on campus, 120 of those have tested positive since June — nearly 22%.
“We’re obviously extremely disappointed that we’ll be unable to host Ohio State this Saturday,” coach Mike Locksley said in a statement. “It was an opportunity that our team was preparing for and excited about. However, we have and always will keep our players, coaches and staff’s safety at the forefront of our decision-making process. We’ll continue to operate as much as we can virtually as we monitor the situation in hopes of returning to play when it’s deemed safe.”
Maryland’s football team has had daily testing since Sept. 30, according to Big Ten protocol. The men’s and women’s basketball teams, which are set to tip off seasons later this month, began daily testing Oct. 26. All other sports have had weekly testing.
For the eight football players who are positive for the coronavirus, they will be unable to return to play for at least 21 days, according to the Big Ten’s protocols. Those players will receive cardiac testing, and they’ll need to be cleared by a cardiologist before they can return.
The team had a virtual meeting at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday to discuss the news, according to a team spokesperson.
“There is nothing more important than the health and well-being of our student-athletes, coaches and staff,” Evans said in a statement. “We realize that this news is disappointing to all of the Maryland fans out there who were looking forward to the Terps taking on an outstanding Ohio State team, but the responsible thing for us to do is pause football activities, given the number of positive cases currently in our program.”
The Terrapins had previously halted all sporting activities in early September after 46 athletes across 10 teams tested positive — a positivity rate of 9.2 percent. A week later, the athletic department tested athletes again. There were 35 positive cases that time, announced Sept. 8, although 19 of those athletes were already in quarantine.
Since June, the positivity rate is 2.25 percent.
This Saturday’s cancelation is the third Big Ten game to be nixed this season due to coronavirus cases, with the other two involving Wisconsin. Across the country, cancelations and postponements are ramping up.
Navy has missed two consecutive weeks following a spike in cases, postponing matchups with Tulsa and Memphis. Four SEC games this weekend have also been postponed, including Missouri-Georgia, Auburn-Mississippi State, Texas A&M-Tennessee and Alabama-LSU.
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