N.C. State's Baseball Team Drops Out Of World Series Over 8 Positive COVID Cases

North Carolina State baseball team disqualified from college world series after 8 COVID positive test results

Imagine working your ass off all season to bring your college a baseball championship and then, at the second to last game, the entire team gets pulled on a technicality because **waits for it** not enough players got the damn COVID-19 vaccine and caused a COVID-19 outbreak. The North Carolina State University’s baseball team was removed from the tournament at the last moment after eight players tested positive for COVID-19 (the Delta variant, no less) and it’s almost like this could have been prevented.

“One win shy of playing for the school’s first national title in any team sport since 1983,” WXII News writes about the loss.

Last Friday, the team played their rivals at Vanderbilt University. As is protocol, all unvaccinated students were tested before the game. At this time, four students tested positive for COVID-19, so they sat out and the remaining players (14 vaccinated students) went against Vanderbilt, but unfortunately, they lost 3-1.

After the game, the 13 vaccinated students who played were tested and four of them also tested positive for COVID-19. One win away from playing for a national championship, the NCAA decided that between the eight positive cases (NBC affiliate WRAL says all eight tested positive for the highly contagious Delta variant) and the number of unvaccinated athletes on the team’s 27-player roster, the NCAA had no choice but to take the team out of the tournament. So close, yet, so, so far. Due to this, Vanderbilt was advanced to the College World Series finals.

“We understood,” NC State chancellor Randy Woodson said in a video (via The News & Observer). “We all know that when we have eight test results on a team of this size, that are all traveling together, living together, eating together, we know what the results are going to be.”

“We were, like, so close,” an incoming freshman at the school told WRAL. “The NCAA just taking it away from us, it’s sad to hear.”

Well no, the NCAA isn’t “taking it away.” The NCAA set guidelines about COVID positive tests and then, the team tested positive. It’s actually pretty cut and dry.

The team said they did all they could do to convince the student-athletes to get vaccinated.

“We did all we could early and often throughout this entire process, through our training staff, through emails, through people that they know [ to educate players about the COVID-19 vaccine],” NC State Director of Athletics Boo Corrigan said (via WXII). “At the end of the day, it’s a very personal and individual decision on what people do. We are going to do all we can to work, to educate, to answer questions, and to be available but at the end of the day it’s that individual’s choice whether or not to get vaccinated.”

Shockingly, a number of people online are mad at the NCAA for disqualifying the team over their COVID results, claiming that since the team members probably won’t die from COVID, it’s fine? Make it make sense.

Rachel Roper, an associate professor of immunology at East Carolina University, told WRAL that the chances of the team getting a shot at the College World Series would have been much higher if more players had gotten their vaccine shots.

Listen, you have the freedom to not get the COVID-19 vaccine, but then you have to deal with the consequences of that decision.