The coronavirus pandemic has altered the sport of football from a game-planning aspect in 2020.
Coaches and players testing positive for COVID-19 results in quarantining for a period of time before being able to practice and compete again. False positive tests have also altered practice structure as coaches and players could be in quarantine before realizing they actually did not have coronavirus.
Teams like Tennessee test on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursdays. The Vols are like other schools at the collegiate level, as well as high schools that have to work around game-planning for an opponent after players and coaches contract the virus or have false positives.
Valdosta High School head coach Rush Propst discussed having to manage his roster this season with student-athletes having positive and false tests.
“I had nine players that I lost for two weeks,” Propst said on the show “Tennessee Two-A-Days.” “I have lost two ball games this year due to COVID-19, so the problem with this stuff is the rhythm. You cannot get into rythm with your football team. One week you are here and expect this and then all of a sudden you are hit with nine kids that are not here, so we lose those kids for practice. It hurts you when you go to practice with 65 kids and you are normally at 80-something.”
Propst mentioned “there is so much unknown still going forward and it is hard for your team to stay focused on the task at hand” while dealing with COVID-19.
“I tell my team every week, that you are defeating two opponents every week — the team that you are playing and COVID-19.”
The hardest part for a team this season is coming off an open date. After playing five games to kick off the 2020 season, Tennessee had its open date last week ahead of playing at Arkansas Saturday.
For Tennessee’s sake, student-athletes had Friday and Saturday off before returning to practice in preparation for Arkansas. Players dispersed away from campus, even coaches such as Tee Martin traveled to watch his son, Amari Rodgers, play at Clemson against Boston College.
“The open date, to me, is the most scariest of times because they sort of let their guard down,” Propst said.
“The COVID bug hits you and we all know the Trevor Lawrence story and what that entails this weekend in South Bend with Notre Dame,” Propst continued. “The same situation with Jeremy at Tennessee and the Arkansas Razorbacks. You can lose a key pivotal player and not get him back and can affect your win-loss record. It’s been difficult, but I promise you whenever you have a group of kids and they are together and they are in routine, they’re structured during the week, and you are playing week in and week out, those players do not have much time to go other places to get infected.
“When you have an open date, all of a sudden a team shuts down and you disperse, you don’t know where they go. Then now they come back in and one gets positive and another gets a positive, then you go back to contact tracing and you lose six, seven more because of exposure. For us it’s 14 days and I know each conference has its own protocol in college football, but that is the hardest pill to swallow, to me, is the contact tracing and losing a kid that doesn’t even test positive, but is quarantined because of contact tracing. Then when you get that player back, what kind of shape is he in. Is it more dangerous for that player to come back and to be thrown into the fire so to speak, when he lost x-amount of weeks or days due to this virus.”
The entire show with Propst can be listened to here or below.