High school football games across Oklahoma have been cancelled and rescheduled because of the coronavirus. But a game between Clinton and Millwood scheduled for Friday was moved for a completely different reason.
Millwood superintendent Cecilia Robinson-Woods is insistent — Millwood football players are student-athletes.
"We're a small school district," Robinson-Woods said. "We joke and say we’re a little family here and this is the same thing like your mother would do. Right? You didn’t make your grades, you can’t compete on Friday."
16 of Millwood’s 47 football players would have been ineligible. The Falcons could’ve fielded a team against the much larger Clinton football squad, but it wouldn’t have been fair.
"So you send 30 kids to play 75 or 80 kids. You know, it's just it's not right. It's not right to ask your teammates to take that kind of burden because you didn't do what you needed to do," Robinson-Woods said.
This isn’t the first time the superintendent has put student well-being before athletics. Last season, Millwood withdrew from an ongoing high school basketball game against Community Christian Academy in Norman because Robinson-Woods said there were too many people in the stands, making coronavirus transmission likely.