Canadian Youth Women’s Field Hockey Team Gets Trial Exemption to Return from South Africa | The Canadian News

Twenty athletes and five staff members of Field Hockey Canada’s youth women’s field hockey team have received a waiver from the federal government that will bring them home this week from South Africa.

The team got stuck in Potchefstroom, a city about 120 kilometers southwest of Johannesburg, when Canada and many other countries enacted new travel restrictions due to the Omicron variant of COVID-19. The team traveled to South Africa for the Youth Women’s World Cup, scheduled for December 5-17.

As the travel bans were announced, concern arose among the families of the team members.

“Today started pretty bad and I have high, high hopes that we will get them home,” said Susan Goddard, whose daughter is on the BC team.

Then on saturday Field Hockey Canada said the federal government had granted a “limited time waiver” to some of the testing requirements for reentry to Canada.

The team will be able to provide a negative PCR test result within 48 hours of your final scheduled flight to Canada, instead of the standard 72 hours, issued by an accredited laboratory in South Africa.

“Field Hockey Canada athletes and staff are currently booked on a flight departing Johannesburg on December 8, in transit through Germany,” the organization wrote on its website. “

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“Field Hockey Canada staff and athletes will check your test documents to make sure they are within the 48 hour period.”

Without the government waiver, the team would not have been able to board its December 8 flight.

The team had previously been informed by the federal government that while a chartered flight to Canada might be possible, all commercial flight options had to be exhausted first.

Susan Goddard woke up on Saturday morning, still under the impression that the December 8 flight to Germany might not be working. As a result, he said, the parents were ready to act.

“We started writing to our parliamentarians again, going back to social networks, reaching out to everyone we could,” he explained.

“Then I got a phone call from my husband and he said, ‘Check your email, check your email! They have an exemption. They come to pass! ‘”

The team arrived in South Africa on November 23 for training. Days later they learned of the restrictions imposed by Canada on travelers from southern African countries, when the World Health Organization called Omicron a variant of concern.

The tournament was canceled last Thursday, but most commercial flights out of South Africa have already been suspended, leaving players and staff without immediate means to travel home.

The team and supporters had raised more than $ 160,000 to enter the tournament after becoming the first Canadian team to win gold at the Youth Pan American Games in Chile in August.

—With files from The Canadian Press

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