Botetourt County high school football fans are having a rough go of it as both Lord Botetourt and James River lost games last Friday and won’t play again this weekend.
James River was scheduled to play at Stuarts Draft last Friday but the game was cancelled at mid-week due to COVID concerns. That will carry over into this week, when the Knights were scheduled to host Glenvar with the Virginia Media Rocking Chair on the line. That game has been postponed until October 18.
“A person affiliated with the James River High School football program tested positive for COVID-19,” said River coach Tim Jennings. “We conducted contact tracing and are following the established CDC and VDH guidelines based on the results of contact tracing. Unfortunately, as a result, we needed to cancel the game on Friday Sept. 24, and reschedule the game for this Friday, Oct. 1.”
River’s next scheduled game will now be October 8 at Alleghany. The rescheduled Glenvar game will give them three games in eight days as the Knights will play at Floyd County on Friday the 15th, home to Glenvar on Monday the 18th and home to Giles on Friday the 22nd.
Lord Botetourt was originally scheduled to play Princeton High of West Virginia last Friday but that game was cancelled a week in advance. Botetourt picked up Bluefield of West Virginia to replace it, this Friday on what was a scheduled bye week, but Bluefield called last week and cancelled as well. Botetourt did not pursue another game so the Cavaliers were left with two consecutive idle Fridays. They hope to resume play on October 8 at William Byrd.
Also, the first Virginia High School League rankings were scheduled to come out this week but due to the number of games cancelled and postponed that did not happen. The VHSL sent out the following release this week.
“The VHSL will release the first VHSL Ratings and Top 20 Rankings for the 2021 football season on Monday, Oct. 11, following Week 7 games instead of the traditional Week 5 release. The delay in releasing the ratings and Top 20 rankings is due to the number of COVID-related game postponements, cancellations, and make-up games. By delaying the announcement by two weeks, it will provide more accurate ratings for each region.”
