59 members of the WHS football team will be released early from school at 2:30 p.m. this Friday, Sept. 13. Months ago, the WHS game against Hopkinton High School was scheduled to be at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, which is considered a neutral site.

The game’s start time was recently pushed up to 4:30 p.m. due to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health increasing the risk of contracting EEE in Sudbury to “critical.” WHS Principal Allyson Mizoguchi told teachers in an email of her belief that a dismissal time of 2:30 p.m. is the latest the athletes can be dismissed from class, get dressed and taped for the game and allow enough time for travel and safe warm-ups before the game.

This scenario raises the question of whether or not more early sports dismissals, which are historically rare, are to come for football or other teams in the next several weeks while EEE risk levels continue to run high in the area. 

“Moving forward, [the administration] will continue to carefully weigh any further scenarios of a similar nature and will do all [it] can to avoid similar disruptions,” Mizoguchi wrote in the email.