HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. -- School in Hillsborough – and several other counties – will have to wait a little longer to start this year because of Covid-19.

The school superintendent announced a two-week delay for the upcoming seasons, and now local athletes and coaches are speaking out. 

Armwood High School defensive tackle Desmond Watson said this delay isn’t the kind of news a lot of student athletes were hoping for.

It’s a problem the twelfth grader isn’t facing as much as some of his teammates. He already has multiple college offers. 

“A lot of my teammates – it will be the last chance for them to get noticed by a lot of colleges,” Watson said.

And while Watson doesn’t think the young healthy athletes would be impacted as much, he says he understands the delay.

“I get it. That’s basically the conversations we have at practice,” Watson said. “But at the same time, people have families that are high risk from like dying from it and stuff like that, so I get why they’re trying to take precautionary measures.”

Armwood’s head football coach, Evan Davis, said he’s tackling some of those worries by keeping his players encouraged and reinforcing some of the safety measures they’ve been taking as a team.

“We are our own bubble, so when we work out and everything, we’re going to be around each other,” Davis said. “So when we’re not with us, unless you’re in your house, you need to be wearing a mask. You need to be washing your hands, sanitizing all the time. Protect our family bubble as much as you can.”

 The proposed start date for school sports is now August 10.