ADRIAN – About 10 members of the Adrian College football team rushed down the steps onto the field.
“This group stays here!” a coach yelled at the first group.
The players were wearing face masks and had just gone through temperature checks. They had that hurried — coach is watching, I’d better hustle — pace. For everything that is strange and surreal about playing football in a pandemic, like going through symptom screenings before walking onto a field, some things remain the same — those loud, barking coaches.
“Jog it down to that far corner!” a coach yelled through a mask, trying to make sure the players maintained social distancing protocols.
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The players were separated into four pods of about 10 players, based on who they live with to minimize contacts. Just to step onto Kapnick Field, they had to pass two coronavirus tests over the last 10 days as well as a daily screening.
“Here we go men!” a coach screamed.
It was Friday afternoon, the start of a one-hour conditioning practice.
The Big Ten has shut down football this fall because of fears about COVID-19, and so has the MAC, the GLIAC, the MIAA and the MHSAA, essentially ending football at almost every college and high school in the state, but Adrian College is trying a novel approach in the midst of this novel coronavirus pandemic. This private liberal arts college is hoping to play football games this fall.
“We are trying,” Adrian athletic director Michael Duffy said. “Is it gonna work? I don't know. I hope so because it'd be a great thing. That means we've figured it out.”
Adrian wants to play four games this fall and then a full MIAA season in the spring.
But it’s not just football. Adrian has about 300 athletes on campus right now, getting ready to play football, men and women's soccer, women's volleyball and synchronized skating. Duffy is trying to schedule games and competitions for all of them this fall.
“The biggest thing I tell my coaches is, ‘We have to learn how to live with this,’ ” Duffy said. “It's not going away. We learned to live with the Spanish Flu. If you look at pictures back from 1918, you're gonna see people sitting in the stands with face masks on 6 feet apart. Well, guess what? That's what we got to do today. It's no different. And we survived that. And we'll survive this. But we got to be smart.”
Maybe, you think it is crazy to try to play football in a pandemic.
Or maybe, you think it is crazy to cancel everything without at least trying.
There are valid points on both sides.
And then there is Adrian president Dr. Jeffrey Docking, who says it is far safer to have college kids on the fields, working out and playing games, than going to parties and bars.
“With this age group, you're better off with 18- to 22-year-olds to keep them active,” Docking said. “The best way to keep them out of bars and out of large groups is to have them studying for tests, reading, going to class and working hard on an athletic field, so they want to go to bed early and get up the next day without being late.”
Trying 'our damndest'
“We got a 5-yard shuffle!” a coach screamed. “Shuffle, shuffle, sprint.”
Ben Pelletier, an offensive lineman from Jackson, crouched over and got into an athletic stance before doing the drill. “I knew a while ago that we were going to try our damndest to play,” Pelletier said. “To seeing it come to fruition is really exciting.”
The school put aside more than $200,000 to test its athletes. The players were asked to get a test at home before arriving on campus. And then, they were tested again once they arrived.
“I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but our rate is pretty low,” Adrian coach Jim Deere said. “It's pretty close to 1% positive. Now, we had a few guys who came in and tested positive. They didn’t get the results until they got here.”
Those players were put into isolation in one-person rooms on campus.
“They bring them their meals,” Deere said. “It’s just pretty boring, I would imagine. I always ask them, ‘You got a TV or a PlayStation? Anything you need, make sure you let us know; we'll drop it outside your door.’ ”
Adrian expects some athletes will come down with the coronavirus. If you look at the numbers across the nation, that seems inevitable.
“Are we going to get some cases along the way?” Duffy said. “Heck yeah. We aren’t immune to this. It’s how we react to these cases and how quickly we isolate those that are sick and do the tracing. That's why we're starting in pods of 10. So that if one kid gets sick in that pod, we're going to quarantine the pod, not the whole team.”
Adrian believes that testing and contact tracing is the key to making this work.
But so is doing the right thing.
And that starts with the players, according to Pelletier, who was a captain last year.
“Everybody is really keeping each other accountable, making sure teammates aren't going out to restaurants and doing stuff like that,” Pelletier said. “They really are trying to create a bubble as much as we can.”
'Something to be excited about'
Deere prepared for this season by reading everything he could about the coronavirus. “If you are gonna do this, I better know about it,” Deere said.
About 150 football players are on campus, although five or six upperclassmen and 10 freshmen opted out, according to Deere. Some because of the coronavirus, others for financial reasons.
“What's beautiful about this?” Deere asked. “It is a risk, but we're dealing with Division 3 athletes and this is their choice. We are not holding anything over their head. They aren’t getting scholarships or anything like that. This is all their choice. We are just providing that opportunity.”
Deere still hasn’t had a team meeting with his entire team. He’s been addressing his team on Zoom calls.
“Yeah it's different,” Deere said. “Obviously, a different type of stress level that you deal with. It's not about the football, as much as it is about being safe. I'm an advocate of doing it the right way and making sure it's safe and following all the protocols and then we worry about coaching football.”
Right now, Adrian is still going through conditioning. The Bulldogs will start practicing in full equipment on Aug.24.
“It gives the kids something to be excited about,” Deere said. “It’s been a long time since they had something to be excited about.”
Adrian is scheduled to play at Lawrence Tech on Oct.10.
“We are super excited,” Lawrence Tech coach Avante Mitchell said.
Mitchell said his team has implemented a long list of rules and procedures to try to keep everybody safe. One of the rules is simple: If you live in one dorm, you can’t visit somebody in another dorm. They are trying to minimize contacts.
But the real test will be how disciplined do his players act away from football.
“We just had a conversation about that,” Mitchell said. “The level of maturity that they execute and live with day to day when they're not on the field is the question at hand. But they are smart kids.”
Duffy said Adrian is playing Trine College at home on Oct.3 and at Manchester College in Indiana on Oct.17.
Adrian has also had discussions to play Concordia College, an NAIA school in Ann Arbor. Right now, Concordia is practicing but hasn’t decided if it will play this fall.
“We will be awaiting the NAIA announcement of the spring championship schedule before scheduling games this fall,” Concordia coach Joshua Schumacher said.
'Got to work together'
After watching the football team practice, I went to the training room.
Kristen Page, a soccer player from Clarkston, stood in front of a kiosk, getting her temperature taken before entering the training room. It looked like she was staring into an ATM machine that scanned her face and took her picture.
Adrian spent about $40,000 on the machines.
"We're really fortunate just to play,” Page said. “It's crazy times and a lot of unknown. It's day by day, but we have great doctors and leadership here. So we're happy to be here.”
The soccer team is also staying in pods of 10, trying to keep groups of friends together.
“The hardest part is not being able to hang out with the freshmen," Page said. "I mean, I'm a senior. When the freshmen come in, like, I feel bad for them, like they're stuck in their dorms.”
To this point, the Adrian bubble is working.
Will it last? They have no idea.
“But we are trying,” Duffy said. "Everybody's got to work together. And we got to keep gatherings down and kids have to make good choices, like stay away from that off-campus party, don't go there. Don't go home on weekends. All those little things. I mean, we can't handcuff them to their beds, but we can impress upon them, 'Look, if you want to make this work, this is what's going to happen and we all have to be in it together.’"
Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff. To read his recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.
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