BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — The presentation given by head football athletic trainer Brian Lund to the members of the football team headed back to Madison to begin voluntary strength and conditioning activities was detailed and direct.
When it was over, Wisconsin student-athletes were one step closer to visiting a new world.
The message emphasizes physical distancing, daily health screenings and the mandatory wearing of protective masks by student-athletes and staff. It promotes the need to treat everyone like a family member — coaches, administrators and support staffers — which means taking the necessary precautions to avoid contracting the disease, thus shielding your teammates from exposure.
"The bottom line is it's about the health and welfare of our student-athletes, our employees, our fans," said Barry Alvarez, the UW director of athletics.
It's been nearly 100 days since the coronavirus pandemic forced the abrupt cancellation of all major sports activities around the world — including NCAA competition — and led schools like Wisconsin to send all their students home to shelter-in-place indefinitely. That includes the 850 or so student-athletes who competed for the Badgers in 23 sports.
Next week, UW Athletics will begin bringing in the first wave of student-athletes, members of the football and volleyball teams, to begin voluntary workouts on June 15. If all goes according to plan, the remaining sports will follow in a staggered fashion.
Everyone will have some adjustments to make.
"One of the hardest things for our student-athletes is that it's going to be a very different environment for them to be in and how things are conducted," said Michael Moll, the UW assistant athletic director for sports medicine.
It's no picnic for Moll, the 12 physicians on staff or the 21 athletic trainers he oversees, either.
"We're doing our jobs very differently than we've ever had to do them before," he said. "Everybody's had to change the way they do things. Just the procedures for us to provide care to a patient within athletics, we've made large, new hoops that we have to jump through."
For example, all student-athlete visits to sports medicine locations are now scheduled by appointment. Moll said criteria have been developed to determine which patients need to be seen in person and which can be handled virtually.
"Everything's reasonable and we can work through it, but delivering medical care with a mask and face shield on is something that we traditionally haven't done in our environment before," Moll said. "We've done it at times, but it's not something we're used to."
Everyone seems game, though.
"The willingness for everyone to collaborate to do what's best for the student-athlete, that continues to be paramount," Moll said.
Every student-athlete will be tested for COVID-19 upon their return to campus. Polymerise chain reaction (PCR) tests will be administered as part of an initial health assessment and screening with the UW Sports Medicine staff that will take place at Camp Randall Stadium.
Workouts are set to begin next week. When they do, they will look quite different.
A student-athlete arriving for a strength and conditioning session for football will follow blue arrows on the asphalt of the breezeway to the stadium entry near gates O and P and deposit a set of dirty clothes from the previous workout session into a laundry bag so they can be washed. From there, he will be met by a UW Sports Medicine staffer, who will ask if they have any coronavirus symptoms or encountered anyone known to have the disease in the last 14 days. If the answer is no to both questions, his temperature will be scanned with an infrared thermometer. Once cleared, he will proceed to the weight room.
The normal football weight room, located inside Camp Randall Stadium, will basically be split down the middle to allow for two 10-man lifting session lifting groups (Group A and Group B) at a time. The football workouts will be overseen by UW head strength and conditioning coach Ross Kolodziej.
Each participant, has their own rack, weights, stretching bands, portable massager, medicine ball, cloth towel, cleaning solution and disposable towels for cleaning their equipment. Bottles of water and Gatorade are arranged nearby. The stations are arranged with physical distancing protocols — at least 6 feet apart — in mind.
When the lifting session is done, both groups will make their way (through separate entrances) to the field inside Camp Randall, the nearby grass field or the turf in the McClain Center for conditioning.
When the two-hour workout is complete, hydration products and protein shakes are dispensed and participants head to their campus homes. For now, there's no access to the football locker room or lounge, so no showers. Before they leave, players are given a clean set of workout clothes to use for the next session and directed to shower once they're home.
Lifting sessions for volleyball, directed by strength and conditioning assistant Kevin Schultz, will be conducted in a separate weight room located in the basement of the McClain Center. Two paths are designated for entry and exit to the weightlifting location, which is equipped and set up like the football areas, each with a nod toward physical distancing.
This script will be followed once a day before every strength and conditioning session. It was authored with input from UW health officials as well as the Big Ten Conference, which put a 14-member medical task force in place in April to provide counsel and advice on emerging infectious diseases. Dr. Ann Sheehy, an associate professor and clinician in the Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and a member of the UW Athletic Board, is part of that team.
"We've collaborated with a lot of other entities," Moll said, "whether they be on campus or within the conference, to make sure we were approaching a return in a very appropriate and safe way to reduce and minimize risk."
Moll, Kolodziej, UW sports physician Dr. David Bernhardt and two members of Alvarez's senior staff — Jason King and Doug Tiedt — have spent countless hours focused on devising a plan to address the coronavirus threat. They report to Alvarez and Chris McIntosh, the deputy director of athletics.
The obvious goal is to keep the coronavirus at arm's length. Following the initial test for COVID-19, student-athletes may be retested if they show symptoms related to the disease or have had contact with someone who has tested positive. If a positive test does emerge, Tiedt said UW health protocols of a self-isolation for 14 days will be followed.
"It's a very regimented process for this initial phase," said King, the senior associate athletic director for capital projects.
There's a lot riding on the first phase.
"To a certain extent you get one shot at this and you've got to have it right," King said.
"Right now we're just crawling because we have to do this really, really well," said Tiedt, the senior associate athletic director for student services. "We can't have any lapses here because in order for us to be able to do this for the rest of our sports — as campus is also looking at this as a way to see how it can work — we need to do it really well and be cautious."
"That's why the education piece is so critical. The messaging is that you're not only protecting yourself, but you're really protecting your teammates because if you test positive, you are also affecting and risking the health of all of the folks you come in contact with who also will need to be quarantined for 14 days. Those are some serious things to consider."
There was a time when people doubted there would be a college football season in 2020. Now there's a semblance of hope that one could materialize.
NCAA rules prohibit UW coach Paul Chryst and his assistants from being involved with the voluntary summer conditioning programs, but he's encouraged from afar.
"To get to Phase One is progress," he said. "You're excited about that starting."
Lund held a presentation and virtual forum with parents of football players just to make sure they're aware of the things being put in place and to answer any questions they might have.
As for summer school classes and study tables, all are being conducted online.
King described other methods of containing the coronavirus. UW has invested in a bipolar ionization air purification system, technology that releases charged atoms that attach to and deactivate bacteria and viruses like those generated by COVID-19. Also, restrooms at Camp Randall are being equipped with touchless toilets, sinks, paper towel and soap dispensers.
"We're going to do everything we can to combat the virus," King said.
As far as the next chapter of Badgers sports is concerned, McIntosh has told coaches and staffers that everyone must learn to walk before they can run.
"What we've learned is that it will be different," he said. "We'd be kidding ourselves if we thought otherwise."
How long will this last?
"That's the hard part with this is not knowing when the end's going to be," Moll said, citing health protocols that are ever-changing. "We're trying to make good decisions based on the data we have. Our plans right now extend just to the end of the strength and conditioning phase."
King said the task of fending off the coronavirus will be about togetherness and selflessness.
"What we promote at Wisconsin is that we're a family and it's about the people," he said. "We're protecting the family. It's about protecting ourselves, protecting others. It's one thing our student-athletes overly embrace because that's what we're built on.
"We have a really solid starting point we can work from."
