Report: Kansas high school football coach and wife contracted COVID but are recovering
Steve Buhler, the head football coach at Washburn Rural High School, tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this month but is recovering, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.
Buhler and his wife, Shelly, the president at Hayden Catholic High School, started experiencing symptoms that included chills, fever and a cold Aug. 4-5, he told the Capital-Journal. He said he has seen daily improvement since then.
With Washburn Rural and most Kansas high school athletes returning to practice Monday, Buhler has worked from home throughout his illness and has been through all tracing protocols, he said in the report.
Buhler coached the East squad in the 2020 Kansas Shrine Bowl, a high school football all-star game, in Topeka on July 18. The teams practiced for several days leading up to the game, which was played at Topeka’s Hummer Sports Complex. Buhler told the Capital-Journal he didn’t believe he contracted the virus at the game; he didn’t begin to experience COVID-19 symptoms until more than two weeks afterward, he said.
“We have not received any information regarding this,” Shrine Bowl Director B.J. Harris told The Eagle in an email Monday when asked about Buhler having contracting COVID-19. “It’s been a month since the final day of our event, so I’m sure we would have been notified by now if an infection was connected to our event.”
Buhler told the Capital-Journal he has worked from home and remained careful about being around his team since learning he contracted the illness.
“I was really careful after the Shrine Bowl,″ he said in the story. “I went to a couple of morning workouts after the Shrine Bowl, but to be honest with you, I pretty much isolated myself just because of that. I’ve had very little contact as far as people in the community and close contact with large groups or anything like that. Our family’s been really careful since this whole thing started.
“Nobody’s been able to tell us where we got it from. The small group of people that we were in contact with during that previous time before we started getting our symptoms, nobody’s came back with any kind of positive reaction, any kind of symptoms or anything.″
This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 3:31 PM with the headline "Report: Kansas high school football coach and wife contracted COVID but are recovering."