Neal Brown can’t help but feel a sense of trepidation.
His West Virginia football team, like all of those in the Big 12, are tested for COVID-19 on three separate occasions throughout the week each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday prior to a game. The Mountaineers had zero positive tests last week and have had none leading up to the road trip to Oklahoma State with the Friday testing still looming but it doesn’t help that sense of uneasiness.
“The same trepidation I’ll feel on Friday is the same one I’ll feel Wednesday over about the 24 to 36 hours it takes to get the tests back,” he said.
While it hasn’t been an issue at West Virginia yet, Brown understands how quickly things can change when it comes to the spread of the coronavirus and how it has affected the scheduling landscape. The virus has forced players to sit out at various schools and multiple games to be canceled.
Big 12 Conference opponent Baylor had two separate games canceled due to COVID-19 and TCU is another that wasn’t able to play a non-conference matchup against TCU. Notre Dame had to postpone its trip to Wake Forest this weekend and it will continue to be a concern for any college team.
“It’s our reality. It’s everybody across the country’s reality,” offensive coordinator Gerad Parker said.
It’s forced the coaches to look at contingency plans for all scenarios despite the positive test results to date. That has meant having conversations about what would occur in certain situations if they got bad news on the availability of a starter or key piece to the depth chart for example.
“I don’t think anybody would be surprised or shocked by any of that stuff happening. We’ve put in place to where we’ve got a really good feel for what we would do if things were to happen,” Parker said.
One thing that West Virginia has placed an emphasis on is trying to do the best they can from a football program perspective to follow every procedure and protocol beforehand. That way you can attempt to cut down on those incidents before they occur, although Brown understands that given the nature of this situation you cannot prevent everything.
“There are going to be some unfortunate circumstances and some things we couldn’t plan for and when that happens we’ll just try to do the next right thing,” he said.
That means if somebody on the team or a group of players do test positive for COVID-19, the coaches would simply make adjustments and more forward.
The good news is that this situation has forced coaches to be more flexible than ever over the last six months which has them quite literally prepared for any scenario that could arise as the Mountaineers attempt to navigate the remainder of the schedule.
“We’ve done every protocol we can for our medical staff and for our team all across our program to avoid as much contact tracing as we can, remaining six feet, keeping masks on. All of those things that have allowed us so far to keep ourselves out of harm’s way. And our guys are going to have to make a continued effort because it can flip in a hurry,” Parker said.
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