6/22/2020 football Edit

Rutgers Football HC Greg Schiano talks COVID cases, spring football

Richie O'Leary • TheKnightReport

Publisher

Early Sunday afternoon, Keith Sargeant of NJ Advance Media, broke the news that the Rutgers Football program had two players test positive for COVID-19

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Just a day later, Scarlet Knights head coach Greg Schiano offered the following statement on having two players test positive.

“We are now in the new normal, so to speak, to have a discussion with you guys and we know that there's interest in what's going on here,” Schiano said to the media on a video call. “I'm really grateful to our medical people, especially to Dr. Burchard who is our chief medical officer, but really to our whole medical staff that have done an incredible job in so many ways. Number one in all the investigation, research, best practices, whether it be with our fellow Big Ten schools or even pro franchises in the area or around the world. I think it's been an exhaustive effort by them to put together the best plan possible. I think it's very real to say you cannot reduce the risk to zero and we all understand that. How can we prepare for a season and try to keep the risk as low as we can? Well we think we've put together a series of routines that need to become rituals for us, especially when you have a group, this size of coaches and staff.

“There's definitely growing, you have to grow, understanding the importance of the big three, social distancing, wearing a mask and washing your hands. As simple as that sounds, all of us in this new normal have found out that you can easily forget, you can make a mistake. When you're in a large group of people, that mistake could have a bigger effect. So we have tried to do everything that we can to present as safe an opportunity for our players and our coaches and our staff. That's been my number one goal long since this pandemic hit the United States.I think our players have done an incredible job in the time that they were away. They are trying to get used to this new normal and are doing better every day and we have to hold each other accountable. That's actually where I was running up from is I just wanted to talk to a group of guys. It's very important that that we hold each other accountable. We have a saying in our program that you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Well, it's a little bit uncomfortable to say to somebody, “hey, come on, put your mask on, or back off”, but we have to do that. I think people are getting more and more accustomed to doing that and it's necessary.”

Coach Schiano also went into detail about the testing process so far and took us step by step of how everything went down to narrow down the two positive cases so far.

“We did have an extensive round of testing, actually three rounds of testing,” said Schiano. “We had a round of testing before our athletes returned to campus. So if they were out of the area, we did a mail order and if they were in the area they came by and we did it. On Monday the 15th, we tested the team, the coaching staff and everybody involved in the program. And now today we had our first follow up test from those tests. From those tests, we had two positives. One of the positives, never made it to campus and he was told to stay at home. The other positive was negative on the first test and then positive on the second. So due to that positive we've had three people in our program quarantine plus the positive test, so four people total. After today's testing, hopefully some of those guys will be freed back up to do to do things with the group. It is certainly uncharted territory right now, we all know that. I'm not a medical professional, but I’ve spent a heck of a lot of time on WebEx, phone calls and conference calls with medical professionals from all over the country and all over the globe, but to say we have the answers I mean that would be that would be an arrogant statement we are trying to do our best with all the information that we have. I can tell you that our administration is done whatever we need to do to be able to get this done.”

Over the past week or so, some college football programs have decided to report their positive COVID-19 cases, while others have not. Coach Schiano feels that reporting these two positives will only help things and thus was a big reason for his team reporting their positives cases.

“There have been several programs that have reported and there's some programs that aren't reporting their positives,” Schiano stated. “I felt it was important that we did report our positives, for a lot of reasons. One to help everybody else and I think we're all in this together, I think that's an understatement. Right so we need to share information, we need to be very open about that. “

Recently rumors have started to heat up that football might be pushed back to the spring altogether and if that’s so coach Schiano and his staff will be ready.

“I'm not in favor or opposed to it,” “I don't know enough of what it all entails medically and scientifically, as well as from an athletic standpoint,” he said. “I know this, that we will pivot and be ready to do whatever the Big Ten conference and the NCAA has determined is the best way to go. That's our job and that's what I am paid to do. As far as how I feel and what's best, that's better off left to them, because those are the guys that are going to make decision, not me. I just want to make sure that whatever they give us is the goal or the aiming point, that we are ready to go when that happens.”