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The NCAA Division I Council announced on May 22 that all voluntary athletics activities would be allowed beginning June 1. On Monday, Texas State began the first of a three-phase plan to resocialize its staff members, coaches and student-athletes safely during the coronavirus pandemic.
Phase 1 of the plan includes 53 football student-athletes working out with the Bobcats’ strength and conditioning staff. All members of the team must enter athletics facilities through controlled entrances where they will be screened for COVID-19 symptoms and have their temperatures taken and documented by athletic trainers.
Players, who were asked to self-isolate for 14 days before returning to practice, will be broken up into groups of 10 or less for workouts and required to wear facemasks during any indoor activities. Likewise, each staff member must wear a facemask in any public area where distancing cannot be maintained and will disinfect workspaces after each use and at the end of the day.
“We are bringing in 53 student-athletes so they can work with our strength and conditioning staff in the first phase,” head coach Jake Spavital said in a statement. “There are a lot of new rules and guidelines, but we are in the initial phase to just get used to the new norm of how we do things now and making sure our student-athletes, faculty, and staff are good.”
Any student-athlete who records a temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher or is experiencing two or more COVID symptoms will be immediately sent home and scheduled an appointment with the Student Health Center to determine if further testing is needed. Test results take approximately two days to finalize and players will be required to self-isolate during that time. If the test results are positive, they must quarantine for an additional 14 days while being monitored.
The team would continue practicing, relying on its daily screenings to detect any changes in health.
“We are implementing protocols and guidelines that are safe and making sure that we are doing the right things,” Spavital said in the statement. “There has been a ton of discussion about how you handle these things. Everyone is excited to get back and doing things, but we are very cautious about how we do it. That is the reason I did not want to bring back a full roster. I want to see how our players get acclimated to doing things. We may have some things out there we may not like, so we will have to adjust on the run. But, we have it down to a good plan to keep everybody in a safe environment.”
Phase 2 is scheduled to begin June 15, allowing the Texas State men’s and women’s basketball teams to start voluntary workouts and workout groups to expand to 50 or less while upholding the same guidelines and precautions.
The Bobcats will transition to Phase 3 on July 6 if the first two phases go smoothly, which would open up voluntary workouts for all other sports. Higher-risk student-athletes are prohibited to begin workouts until Phase 3 and all locker rooms will be closed until the start of team camps or the beginning of the fall semester.
Spavital expects to bring in another 10-20 players during Phase 2, moving up to 85 participants in Phase 3 and having a full roster back by July 22-27 to begin fall practices.
“Everything is going to come down to how this first phase goes,” Spavital said in the statement. “If we feel comfortable, we can have more people come in. This is how most of America is going to go. There is going to be phasing in and making sure there aren’t any outbreaks, and we keep the players in a safe environment.”
The plan was put together by the University’s Continuity of Intercollegiate Athletics Work Group Committee, chaired by Executive Senior Associate Athletics Directors Travis Comer and Don Coryell. The committee also included Director of Athletics Larry Teis, Director of the Student Health Center and Texas State Chief Medical Officer Dr. Emilio Carranco, Chin-Hong Chua, Dr. Michelle Hamilton, Jason Karlik, Dr. Lisa Loyd, Dr. Rosanne Proite, John Root, Tracy Shoemake, Kelsey Solis, Jeremy Stolfa, and student-athletes Brooke Blackwell, Gabrielle Jones, Kenedi Rutherford and Tyler Vitt.
Texas State was one of five Sun Belt schools that returned on June 1, joining Louisiana-Monroe, Georgia Southern, Georgia State and Troy.
“I want to thank all the members of the committee, including department staff, university personnel, and student-athletes who have had great discussions on how to make our return to campus as safe as possible,” Teis said in a statement. “Our number one priority is the general health and safety of our student-athletes, coaches, and staff, and all of these precautions include recommendations by Dr. Carranco, and Dr. Bryant Frazier, Texas State Sports Medicine Coordinator.”
The University did not detail in its press release what steps would be taken in a worst-case scenario in which multiple team members test positive, or at what point workouts would be shut down. However, a school spokesperson did say that Texas State would follow the proper guidelines set by the NCAA and Sun Belt.
The maroon and gold are scheduled to host SMU at Bobcat Stadium in the 2020 season opener on September 5.
