The video board at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium reminded reduced-capacity crowds of the health and safety protocols in place during the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo: Tim Casey/UAA Communications)
One Year Later, Hope Rises Amidst Constant Challenges
Friday, March 12, 2021 | General
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By: Joey Johnston, Special To FloridaGators.com
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- It all seemed so normal.
On Nov. 7 in Jacksonville, the No. 8-ranked Florida Gators defeated No. 5 Georgia 44-28, marking UF's first victory in the storied football rivalry since 2016. It was a watershed moment, giving an upper hand to UF in the Southeastern Conference's East Division race.
Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin remembers feeling exuberant. But as he left the stadium, reality hit hard.
"When you're at Florida-Georgia, that parking lot is an absolutely unforgettable scene before and after the game,'' Stricklin said. "Very colorful, noisy, tailgating, all the things you associate with college football.
"As I walked out that day, the parking lot was quiet and pretty empty. Despite the excitement of that day, it was a stark reminder that things weren't normal.''
Things haven't been normal for a full year.
In a sign of the times, UF athletic director Scott Stricklin wears a face covering at a Gators football game in 2020. (Photo: Kelly Chase/UAA Communications)
Last March 13, the University Athletic Association announced that all UF athletic activities were shutting down for two months — in accord with stoppages in all collegiate, professional and high-school sports — due to those strange new words that would soon become part of the daily American lexicon.
Coronavirus.
COVID-19.
The competition suspension soon went from two months through the academic year, then into the summer. When athletes were welcomed back to campus — with testing protocols, masking and social-distancing procedures in place — there were still outbreaks, delays, frustration, postponements and cancellations.
UF football's SEC-only 10-game schedule had a three-week break between games due to an outbreak on the team following its road game at Texas A&M. Coach Dan Mullen tested positive for COVID-19. Men's basketball began a week late after the cancellation of three contests.
At Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, the familiar sight of 90,000 fans was reduced to about 20-percent of capacity (approximately 17,000) and some loyal, longtime supporters were forced into the unthinkable — a fall without witnessing Gators football in person.
But even that wasn't as drastic as what happened in March and beyond.
The NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments were canceled.
So was the College World Series for baseball and softball.
Spring football was abandoned.
"I was on the front line when this thing started, sitting down for our pregame meal in Nashville, when we got word the SEC Tournament was being canceled,'' said Dave "Duke'' Werner, associate athletic director for UAA Sports Health and the UF men's basketball athletic trainer. "I immediately thought, 'There's no way they'll cancel the NCAA Tournament.' By the end of the day, that was shut down. In a four-day span, we went from not really understanding the virus to having our world in athletics turned completely upside down.'' Dave "Duke" Werner, left, was in Nashville at last year's SEC Tournament when he was hit by the reality of how much the world was about to change. (Photo: Tim Casey/UAA Communications)
UF's athletic trainers and medical staff worked closely with Dr. Michael Lauzardo, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Medicine at UF Health, and Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi, director of UF Health's Antimicrobial Stewardship Program. The UAA developed procedures and protocols that complied with stipulations from the Center for Disease Control and the SEC.
"There have been moments of optimism and fulfillment, but there were also moments where you hit rock bottom,'' said Stacey Higgins, associate athletic director for UAA Sports Health, who along with Werner serves as the point-person for COVID-related issues. "There were moments when I actually thought, 'I don't know how we're going to pull this off.' I remember crying in my office, wondering how we could handle the amount of stress and pressure we were under.
"I am a Gator. I love seeing our teams out there competing. But then we would have a huge outbreak. We were trying to manage our athletes. You can't even imagine the phone calls we were fielding from coaches and parents. It was completely overwhelming, this wild roller coaster. All we could do was our best. All we could do was keep going. That's what we did. Everyone worked together to make it all work.''
A Premonition, Then A Plan
The UAA has long maintained a detailed Business Continuity Plan, which covers potential disasters such as hurricanes, fires or terrorist acts, along with plans on how employees could work remotely.
Pandemics were mentioned with this rejoinder:
"Highly Unlikely.''
Chip Howard, UF's executive associate athletics director for internal affairs, considers himself a student of history. He read about the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20, which infected about 500 million people (about a third of the world's population).
It's his business to know such things — and to anticipate the potential of history repeating itself.
"About a week before we headed out to the SEC (Men's Basketball) Tournament in Nashville, I was reading a lot, watching the news, researching what was going on with this virus,'' Howard said. "It didn't feel right. I told Scott (Stricklin), 'I don't think I should go to Nashville.' I felt like we needed to get a plan together and I should stay in Gainesville. I just had a bad feeling, a gut feeling, that this wasn't going away and it was going to affect us.
"People were saying, 'It will never happen here.' But I was really dialed into China. That's not just a blip, them shutting down and locking down. There are a lot of people going to and from China. You talk to an infectious disease person and they say, 'Yeah, it's probably already here.' That made you think, 'Oh boy.' So, I had my preparedness hat on.''
Chip Howard, UF's executive associate athletics director for internal affairs, speaks to the media during a tour of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium prior to the 2020 football season. (Photo: Tim Casey/UAA Communications)
Three days after the UAA contingent departed for Nashville, they hurriedly returned to Gainesville after the National Basketball Association shut down and college basketball tournaments were canceling like falling dominoes. About 10 senior UAA officials crammed into Howard's office to discuss their options.
"We weren't wearing masks, of course, and we were naive about so many things that we would never do now,'' Higgins said. "In the beginning, we were talking about surface transmission. We had no idea exactly what we were dealing with. Everybody was looking to Duke (Werner) and I as experts and the most expert minds in our country didn't really know.
"As time went on, we were asked to implement a program to protect our athletes, our staff and the community at large, to bring athletics back, and we didn't even have the foundational information about the virus. We had no idea about long-term ramifications. Some of our staff is older and risk mitigation was our biggest goal. It was like this big moving target.''
Ultimately, the UAA worked closely with UF leadership, UFHealth, the CDC and the SEC to develop a plan, which always had health and safety as the top priorities. UFHealth had final approval on how the UAA traveled its athletes, held practices, how fans were hosted in stadiums and how concession stands were operated. The UAA mirrored the communications strategy of the university at large, so messaging was consistent.
Howard compared the UAA plan to a football coach who considers injuries and personnel before studying tendencies and making the proper adjustments.
When the football team returned, the weight room was reassembled at the indoor practice facility, where athletes could work in open-air space. Basketball teams moved locker-room gear to a socially distanced arrangement on the practice floor.
Higgins remembers feeling optimistic when watching soccer players doing individual workouts with proper spacing. She felt relief when UF's first home event, cross country's Mountain Dew Invitational, was held without incident.
Higgins and Werner said coaches and athletes quickly adapted to the safety protocols, which included the use of a Kinexon Safe Zone chip for football and basketball. The device measured how long a player had contact with another from 6 feet or less. In a 40-minute basketball game, Werner said, that usually ran just under four minutes on the high side. The data was used for scientific contact tracing if another athlete had a positive test.
"The device slipped into a pouch in their uniform,'' Werner said. "When the athletes came in to get taped, instead of giving them a Gatorade, like the old days, we gave them their Kinexon device.''
Back To Normal?
Even with the successful adjustments, athletes, coaches and UAA officials clamor for a return to normal — the days when there are no masks, no testing, no cancellations and full stadiums.
"We've all realized the importance of young people competing — and fans watching — to what we do,'' Stricklin said. "All those Zoom meetings we had in the spring, we had such a lack of human interaction. It takes its toll. We all subconsciously crave human interaction. We can do the job, but it's not the same level of connection. Through all of this, even when you're together, you're apart (socially distanced). It's an emotional disconnect.''
Stricklin said college athletics is made special by aspects that surround the game, such as tailgating, an energetic sellout crowd and marching bands. When they return, things will seem more natural. But will things ever be completely normal again?
A sign outside Bridgestone Arena on Thursday in Nashville reminds fans attending the SEC Tournament of the ongoing pandemic. (Photo: Alex de la Osa/UAA Communications)
"Even as the vaccine rolls out, it may take time for some fans to feel comfortable in large gatherings,'' Howard said. "Much like 9/11 added anxiety for people who flew on airlines, there will be lingering anxiety over this pandemic. I think we ease back into the pool and some people might never swim again.''
"I just won't predict when we get back to 'normal' because every prediction I've had has been wrong,'' Werner said. "I'm ready for normal. At men's basketball games, we turn off all the lights during introductions and play our highlight video. But there's nobody there to clap and cheer. It's like you're in church. It's crazy. The athletes love to compete, but I know they want it all back to normal, too."
For athletes, it's mostly online classes. It's picking up a meal and taking it back to their room. It's COVID testing, up to three times a week. It's constantly being reminded to wear a mask, to stay cooped up and go months without seeing family members, to avoid parties and most interactions common to a college student.
"I can see it on their faces and it's just not the same,'' Higgins said. "The joy has been taken away. The interactions are so superficial. COVID fatigue is real. Everything is so business-oriented. We're missing the socializing, the laughter, the storytelling. Life is very clinical and it's wearing on all of us. It's supposed to be, you know, fun.''
Ah, fun.
Stricklin said the fun will return, along with all the game-day traditions, hopefully more sooner than later. In the meantime, the UAA is prepared to adhere to medical stipulations as long as necessary.
"The UAA has been able to navigate this because of our people — our medicine team, our operations people and even our finance people, who make ends meet during these trying times,'' Stricklin said. "They have shown us all why it's special to be a Gator.
"Gator fans tell us they can't wait to return to the normal level of engagement. They want to watch our athletes compete and be back at events full level. It's a symbiotic relationship. We look forward to the day when we can all be back together again.''
