TUPPER LAKE — Quarantines are knocking gaps in high school sports schedules this year.

Tupper Lake’s football team is in the middle of a period where games are being postponed or cancelled because of COVID-19 exposures within and outside of the district.

Last week’s game against Weedsport was cancelled because the Lumberjacks were not able to field enough players.

“A big chunk of our football team was in quarantine,” Tupper Lake Central School District Russ Bartlett said.

He said a group of players were in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 and had to isolate.

Tupper Lake has a smaller football team roster, which TLCSD Athletics Director Dan Brown said gives them less “wiggle room” when there’s a quarantine.

Football is a “high risk” sport for transmission of the virus, according to the state Department of Health, because players are unmasked and in close contact with each other.

Everyone on the Tupper Lake team got out of quarantine on Friday, Bartlett said, but the teams they’re set to play in the upcoming days cancelled or postponed their games for various reasons. Friday’s home game against Thousand Islands Central School District was cancelled because the visiting team didn’t have enough players.

There’s a variety of factors which can cancel or reschedule a game: athletes quarantining on either team, or even bus drivers having to quarantine. Sometimes they’ve got days of notice, Brown said, sometimes it’s hours.

He said TLCSD cancelled all sports games and practices for two days last week as the football team quarantined.

Brown said sometimes team morale is high because they’re feeling unified by working through adversity. Sometimes morale is low as the last-minute changes and cancellations become frustrating.

Brown said tension has been high as people process the sporting stoppages. Each county handles quarantines differently, which leads to some frustration, he said. Bartlett asked that athletes and parents of athletes stay calm, kind and reasonable.

The next TLCSD varsity football game on the schedule is on Oct. 16 versus New York Mills Union Free School District at 1 p.m.