Tag: when will sports return

NCAA issues next set of return-to-sport guidelines

On Thursday the NCAA released it’s latest set of guidelines for athletes and teams to return-to-sport

This from the NCAA offices, released on Thursday afternoon:

Third installment of recommendations outlines daily self-health checks, testing within 72 hours of competition for high contact risk sports

July 16, 2020 12:29pm

The NCAA Sport Science Institute has released the Resocialization of Collegiate Sport: Developing Standards for Practice and Competition to extend previous guidance and provide updated recommendations about the protection of athletes and prevention of community spread of COVID-19.

The guidelines are designed to inform schools in responding appropriately based on their specific circumstances and in the best interest of returning college athletes’ health and well-being. Many sports require close, personal contact and require specially crafted guidelines. Among the recommendations put forth:

  • Daily self-health checks.
  • The appropriate use of face coverings and social distancing during training, competition and outside of athletics.
  • Testing strategies for all athletics activities, including pre-season, regular season and post-season.
  • Testing and results within 72 hours of competition in high contact risk sports.

“Any recommendation on a pathway toward a safe return to sport will depend on the national trajectory of COVID-19 spread,” said Brian Hainline, NCAA chief medical officer. “The idea of sport resocialization is predicated on a scenario of reduced or flattened infection rates.”

“When we made the extremely difficult decision to cancel last spring’s championships it was because there was simply no way to conduct them safely,” said NCAA President Mark Emmert. “This document lays out the advice of health care professionals as to how to resume college sports if we can achieve an environment where COVID-19 rates are manageable. Today, sadly, the data point in the wrong direction. If there is to be college sports in the fall, we need to get a much better handle on the pandemic.”

The recommendations were developed in collaboration with the NCAA COVID-19 Advisory Panel, American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) COVID-19 Working Group, Autonomy-5 Medical Advisory Group, National Medical Association, and NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports Prevention and Performance Subcommittee. The guidance also takes into consideration recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It is the latest update to the initial Core Principles of Resocialization of Collegiate Sport recommendations, providing guidelines and practices that schools should consider as they develop their own mitigation plans. The previously released Action Plan Considerations offered recommendations to help schools mitigate risks of COVID-19 spread as staff and student-athletes return.

For more information on the NCAA’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, visit ncaa.org/covid-19.

Brian Kelly gives update on all things Notre Dame football

Notre Dame head football coach Brian Kelly joined Rich Eisen on Wednesday and updated the world on everything going on in regards to Notre Dame football.

Brian Kelly has been coaching football for over 30 years and hasn’t experienced anything quite like what he’s dealing with as a coach right now.  Kelly joined “The Rich Eisen Show” on Wednesday and updated the world on pretty much everything in regards to Notre Dame football in 2020.

Why is he optimistic that Notre Dame will have a football season in 2020?

“Because I think our university wants to have one,” Kelly said.  He wouldn’t speak for university administration but also offered “if there are students on our campus, we’re playing football!”

On playing Navy on August 29th in Dublin, Ireland:

“Navy is gonna be a game, whether it’s played in Ireland or Bethesda.  I think we’re going to play. I don’t have definitive, 100%, but obviously things are trending that way, we’re moving in that direction, we want to play in the fall…at the end of the day those decisions are going to be made by our president and board of trustees, not the football coach at Notre Dame, so let’s get that straight.

So FedEx Field just outside of Washington, DC I assume he means?  That’s fine, although playing in Annapolis would be a lot cooler.

On how Notre Dame plans to handle social distancing with the football team:

“As we’re planning on no salad bars and spacing in the locker room and the weight room and some of these really important issues so you can in fact avoid a hot spot or the potential of what the worst case scenario could be, you start and then you have to shut down“

On what the players most want to know:

“The players just want to know dates and times. They want to be in the position where they can put on the calendar.  The problem is we can’t give them that because everything is staged in terms of the states and universities. They want to wait as long as they can because they want to get better testing, they want to get better tracing, they want to get where are we going to quarantine and and those things take more time.”

On uniqueness of getting players back on campus:

“It gets to the point where I know it’s frustrating for them, but they know that we’re doing all the planning necessary, because here’s where it’s a little different than year’s past.”

“We have to over-communicate with the parents. If it’s my kid I’m not putting him on a plane to South Bend.  I better know exactly what’s in place for my son when he gets there that he’s not going to get sick.”

You can watch the entire interview, complete with a Brian Kelly head-shot from probably 2011, below.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCFLmqjL0Ks&w=560&h=315]