A packed crowd erupts behind Montpelier coach Nick Foster (and his son Clayton Foster) during Wednesday’s semifinal at Barre Auditorium. After Sunday's state championship game, also at the auditorium. 31 people tested positive for COVID-19 at Montpelier High School. Photo by Tom Brown.
An outbreak of COVID-19 appears to be correlated with Sunday’s basketball game, according to Montpelier High School principal Renee DeVore. The Montpelier boys basketball team took home the trophy at Sunday’s Division II state championship game at the Barre Auditorium, but the crowd may have taken home COVID-19. Over 1,500 people attended the game, in which the Solons defeated Mount St. Joseph Academy of Rutland, but only about two thirds of the crowd wore masks according to one attendee.
“We have been made aware of 13 positive COVID-19 cases at MHS. Because many students attended the basketball championship game on Sunday and all of our new positives have been in school this week, we are making the assumption that the majority of our student body could have had some sort of exposure to a positive case,” DeVore wrote in an email that went out to the school community early March 17.
“Today we are holding a voluntary mass antigen testing event available to all students and staff at MHS,” she said.
Students can request antigen tests, she said, and the school nurse will be unavailable by phone or email while testing students.
