Pitt players back on campus is not as simple as it looks
Phased return involves overabundance of details
Pitt football officially welcomed its players back to campus Monday, starting its “phased return to voluntary football activities” after nearly three months away due to the spread of COVID-19. As announced on May 29, this process will lead to an August training camp in anticipation of a 2020 college football season starting on time.
But as of Monday, Pitt players are neither on the field nor at the team’s South Side facility. And they won’t be for at least another two weeks.
Jennifer Brown, Pitt’s senior associate athletic director for sports medicine — the person guiding this phased return from a medical safety standpoint — spoke to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Monday, explaining testing and day-to-day protocols Pitt players will go through over the next month.
Now that they’ve returned to campus, the Panthers must quarantine in their respective apartments and dorms for 14 days, a period that started Monday. Brown said that figure is based on posttravel recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
During the 14-day period, players will have access to Pitt’s team physicians via virtual appointments if need be. They also will answer daily screening questions and fill out a history questionnaire, disclosing any previous COVID-19 testing, individuals they’ve been in contact with and locations they have traveled to outside of Pittsburgh since leaving campus in March.
Between next Monday and next Sunday — Days 8 and 14 of quarantine, respectively — players will schedule individual, in-person meetings with team physicians. There, they will be evaluated for COVID-19 symptoms.
Only players who show symptoms of COVID-19 will be required to undergo testing, Brown said. Players who are deemed asymptomatic still will have the
opportunity to be tested if they choose, after being educated by team physicians on the options available to them.
Pitt has access to antibody blood tests, which can show if someone has had previous exposure to the virus but doesn’t guarantee immunity. The medical staff also has nasopharyngeal tests — aka the nasal swab test — that will confirm if someone currently has COVID-19. If a player is symptomatic, they will be administered the nasal swab test.
Should that player test positive for COVID-19, they will be treated medically and enter an isolated quarantine at an on-campus location. Brown did not specify where on Pitt’s campus the player would reside, but she specified that they would be away from teammates, coaches and roommates.
In addition, members of Pitt’s sports medical staff — who have been trained in contact tracing — would work to determine who that positive-tested individual came in contact with. Those who came in contact will not be isolated, but instead quarantine at home and stay away from the facility.
A Pitt spokesperson said the university has not yet determined if it will publicly announce or acknowledge positive tests.
As for returning to the facility, the Pitt players who either don’t show symptoms of COVID-19 or test neg-ative will notice significant on-site changes in protocol after the 14-day quarantine.
Before walking through those silver doors on the South Side, Pat Narduzzi’s Panthers will have their temperatures checked. They’ll also need to answer a daily questionnaire on their phones, confirming that they’re not feeling ill or experiencing symptoms.
Once inside UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, everyone must wear a mask. Social distancing measures will be enforced everywhere from the weight and meeting rooms to the training tables. The locker room, Brown said, will be “a place to go in, change, shower if you need to,” not a spot to sit and hang out. In the team cafe, most meals will be of the grab-andgo variety.
The actual voluntary training, which will be led by strength and conditioning staff Mike Stacchiotti, will be limited to 10 players per session. The schedule is set up so there could be a 10-player group on the field and a 10player group in the weight room at the same time — but to limit the potential spread of the virus and make contact-tracing easier, the groups would not interact in any way.
That 10-player limit eventually will go away when season prep changes from voluntary workouts to sessions with Narduzzi and the coaching staff. College football’s long-talked-about six-week preseason practice plan is expected to be approved by the NCAA Division I Football Oversight Committee on Thursday, according to a report Monday by Sports Illustrated.
Under the plan, teams that begin their season on Labor Day weekend — such as Pitt, which plays host Sept. 5 to Miami of Ohio — could begin “required” workouts (six hours a week with strength staff, two hours a week of film study with coaches) on July 13.
Those required workouts would then lead into “enhanced summer training,” a two-week stretch of walkthrough practices and team meetings constituting the start of the six-week plan. Closing out the plan would be a normal four-week preseason camp, bringing teams to the start of the season.
As Pitt prepares for the campaign throughout July and August, Brown noted that the program’s testing protocol is subject to change. She said required testing of asymptomatic, as well as symptomatic, players could be necessary once training camp starts in August and the season rolls around in September, with Pitt expecting to look to the ACC for perhaps a conference-wide mandate or guidelines.
Until then, Brown said Pitt will continue to evaluate the football team’s return — and how that might affect other Panthers programs coming back to campus.
“Nothing is completely in black and white,” Brown said. “We’re writing a lot in pencil and erasing and changing, whether it’s just related to football or not.”