Telegraph photo by TOM KING Nashua South running back Jason Compoh is gang tackled by a group of Alvirne defensders, led by Liam O'Neil (20) during last Friday's game at Stellos Stadium. The Panthers are hopeful they can still play Merrimack on Friday after health officials complete an investigation of a COVID outbreak at a Nashua church.

NASHUA – There will be no athletic contests today for Nashua High School North and South, as well as the three city middle schools, as local health officials try to ensure that there’s no connection between the recent COVID-19 outbreak at Gate City Church and local student athletes in the city and surrounding communities.

For the high schools, that meant candelling scheduled games in boys and girls soccer, volleyball as well as cross country between Alvirne and Nashua North, plus field hockey, volleyball and cross country between Nashua South and Merrimack.

It’s possible, officials said, things could be resolved as early as today.

Nashua Director of Public Health and Community Services, Bobbie D. Bagley, said Monday that the church case has 37 positive cases with 11 percent of the people under the age of 18.

“We have people from different communities who were at that event,” Bagley said, referring to the event at the church late last month where the infections/exposures began. “We need to know of those, who has kids under 18 and do any of those kids play sports.

“We’re just trying to minimize the risk of exposure.”

Originally, after conversations with Bagley over the weekend, Nashua athletic director Lisa Gingras had cancelled the entire week of South-Merrimack events, including football this Friday.

That could change. Merrimack had an outbreak two weeks ago but all their teams emerged from quarantine by Saturday, including football. In fact, the Merrimack boys and girls soccer teams, as well as girls volleyball, both played games late last week.

But Gingras said that if the news she receives from health officials, hopefully today, is good, then the games the second half of the week with Merrimack that were originally canceled can be played.

“I’ve reached out to Mike (Merrimack athletic director Mike Soucy),” Gingras said early Monday evening. “A lot has changed between (Sunday and Monday). If we can, and they haven’t found other games, we’ll reschedule the second half of the week with Merrimack.”

The move originally mystified Soucy and other Merrimack school officials, who were afraid people would think that Merrimack still had an issue. Soucy said there have been no new cases since the problem of two student athletes testing positive — one on football and another with cross country – two weeks ago that resulted in cancellation of all games most of that week to be on the safe side.

The Tomahawks football team, which has been back at practice since Saturday, has played just one game this season. Due to quarantine its games with Nashua North Oct. 2 and Salem Oct. 9 were cancelled. The Merrimack field hockey team has played just three contests and the Division I open tournament is scheduled to begin next week.

“I just don’t want people thinking that there’s an epidemic in Merrimack,” Soucy said, “because that’s not the case

“…We had 170 student athletes quarantine after we determined whether they had close contact, within six or 10 feet, etc. We’ve had no new cases within the school. We had four cases in athletics. They’re long gone now. We have 19 (positive tests) in the entire town.”

Soucy said he hadn’t heard back as of yet from any other schools to fill any possible void for his teams, and knows he won’t be able to get the Tomahawks a football game unless they are able to play Nashua South Friday as originally scheduled.

The one fear he has is that based on this week’s now tentative cancellations that other schools would jump to conclusions and won’t want to play Merrimack in anything at all.

Meanwhile, one could speculate that North vs. Alvirne football on Friday in Hudson could also be in question if the health investigation finds any student-athlete connection in either community.

Bagley said the contact tracing/investigating has been difficult because people aren’t fully aware of the severity of the situation.

“What we’re learning is people will say, ‘Well, I’m not sick, I don’t have any symptoms,;” Bagley said, noting that they could still be asymptomatic and spread the virus without knowing it.

“We just have to make sure who was exposed plus determine the potential of further exposure with these teams, and get that nailed down.”

Gingras said it’s better to not play games now at the risk of not being able to play them down the road.

“We’d rather miss a game or two than teams not be able to play for the next three weeks,” she said. “We have to get it under control. … Bobbie will do her research, and after that, if everything’s OK, we should be able to play the rest of the week.”

Before all of these discussions, South played Bishop Guertin and North played Exeter in field hockey on Monday.

South coach Scott Knight said his team has a plan for the week if there’s no game and they can continue to practice.

“We’ve dealt with this before with Thanksgiving. We’re not going to miss a beat. We’ll be sure to get our lifting in this week. We’ll have ‘O’ (offense) practice (yesterday) against ourselves. We’ll have ‘D’ practice (today) against ourselves. Give them Wednesday off and then start prepping for (Bishop) Guertin on Thursday and Friday.”

Of course, said Gingras, everything is fluid.

“Things can change by the hour,” Gingras said. “Hopefully, things change for the better.”

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