CALGARY -- Rocco Sirianni wasn’t sure what to expect heading into the 2020 Calgary Bantam football season.
Sirianni plays safety for the Cowboys football team. Safety was also his main concern when he got on the football field.
But those concerns were put to rest early. The 13-year-old says the league did everything right to get through the COVID-19 pandemic - and for the most part, it worked.
“They sanitized all the bags and the balls before practice," he said. "They’ve been doing a COVID-19 checkup before practices and making sure that all of us are healthy and safe to play,” he said.
“I’m just very happy that they’ve been doing that so we can have a good season.”
Not all smooth sailing
However it wasn’t all smooth sailing. There were some challenges along the way. Two players and a coach tested positive for COVID-19.
Fortunately that happened when they were outside of the bantam football cohort. League president Bill Monks said the league’s safety program caught all of them before they entered back into the cohort.
“Every time something like that happened, everyone in that cohort would go for testing as an added safety precaution,” he told CTV.
“Our motto this year was really to err on the side of caution.”
The pandemic playbook
Melissa Roth is the director of health and safety for the league. It was her job to come up with the playbook on how to make things safe.
A lot of work went into writing the 50 page manual. Roth was a big reason whey they were able to get through this season, but she said a lot of good team work went into devising a pandemic playbook.
“It’s a little bit heavy honestly," Roth said. "I definitely put some hard work into it but so did a lot of other people. Honestly there’s no way that the season would have been successful without people buying into the guidelines.”
Monks is proud of how everyone rallied to make the bantam football season a success.
He says it’s a victory that many can share.
“The way the football community has come together," Monks said.. "The coaches, managers, officials, directors as well as the parents all got on board."
“It’s been uplifting for these kids. Remember they were sequestered for three or four months before we were able to bring them back out to the field.”
Sirianni and his teammates will take to the field fort the last time this season on Saturday when they face the Hilltoppers at Shouldice Park.
