Positive COVID-19 test sidelines Cedar Rapids Kennedy varsity football team

CEDAR RAPIDS — A positive case of COVID-19 will force the Cedar Rapids Kennedy football team to quarantine for 14 days.

'We've been made aware of a situation that created a risk of significant exposure to our varsity team,' said Kennedy athletics director Aaron Stecker, who was made aware of the situation Monday morning.

The quarantine began immediately after Kennedy's 28-21 loss to Cedar Rapids Washington last Friday and will end at 10 p.m. Sept. 18.

Kennedy (1-1) was forced to cancel its varsity game Friday at Kingston against Cedar Rapids Jefferson. The sophomore game is still on, and the J-Hawks (0-2) will follow with a varsity game against Class 4A second-ranked Southeast Polk (2-0).

The Cougars are scheduled to play at Dubuque Senior on Sept. 18, and Stecker said he is 'holding out some hope' that game can be played at some point. He also said no other Kennedy sports are currently impacted.

With the Kennedy news and the announcement that a temporary injunction filed by the Iowa City Community School District against the state Board of Education and Gov. Kim Reynolds to allow it to continue all online learning right now has been rejected, activities at Iowa City High, Iowa City West and Iowa City Liberty have been suspended.

That means those three schools also will not play their regularly scheduled football games Friday. Their opponents were Cedar Rapids Washington, Linn-Mar and Waterloo West, which have found new games.

Washington (2-0) will now play Friday night at Marshalltown (1-1), and Linn-Mar (0-2) and West (1-1) will play at Waterloo. Marshalltown needed a new opponent because Ames, its original opponent, is being shut down because it is doing all online learning due to high COVID-19 infection rates in Story County.

The Board of Education, Iowa High School Athletic Association and Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union have agreed that schools must have at least partial in-person learning in order to have activities.

Western Dubuque had its scheduled game Friday against Charles City canceled because of a COVID-19 situation with Charles City, so the Bobcats have picked up Indianola to play instead Friday at Indianola. Indianola originally was scheduled to play Des Moines Lincoln, but the five public Des Moines high schools also have activities suspended because of all online classes.

The Anamosa-Monticello rivalry game scheduled for Friday also has been canceled because of a COVID-19 situation at Monticello. Anamosa does not have a new opponent as of Tuesday.

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