As UConn navigates COVID crisis, transparency matters

My heart goes out to college athletes left on the sidelines for seven days, two weeks or an entire season because of COVID-19 policies. I’ve got one of my own at home. And to see Dan Hurley’s hangdog look on Zoom late Tuesday afternoon, it’s clear the virus is taking its toll on everyone.

Listening to the UConn men’s coach explain the timeline of how the Vanderbilt and NC State games were canceled because of their COVID issues, how the Huskies had to wait for a bus to get back to Storrs from Mohegan Sun only for a UConn player to test positive — it was a story of one frustration after another. The Huskies already had one two-week shutdown last month and the stops and starts must be draining on young athletes.

Still, the pangs of my heart and the responsibilities of my profession are different matters. At the risk of being called a crybaby and a slew of emails and Tweets that “Nobody cares about your problems,” I’m going to continue …

The UConn women’s basketball team sent out a notice Monday night that it had resumed full practice on Thursday from its own COVID shutdown after multiple negative tests among its players.

As someone who writes regularly about the most intensively covered women’s college sports team in history, I’m fairly embarrassed I didn’t know anything about the Huskies

getting in potentially five days of practices before a passionate fan base was able to get even a sniff of the news.

It’s difficult to see this happening with the Yankees, the ultra-secretive Patriots or so many heavily covered college football and basketball teams. Alas, it happened, and I asked UConn Athletic Director Dave Benedict about the long announcement delay during a Zoom conference he called earlier Tuesday to answer questions about COVID. I even asked whether there had been privacy issues that prevented such a mundane disclosure.

“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you right away, but it’s not necessarily the highest priority to communicate publicly everything we’re doing,” Benedict said. “We’re happy our kids are back on the court. We’re happy our coaches are all back together for the first time today in a while.”

But four nights later? Really? That’s not low priority. That’s no priority.

It would be scant exaggeration to say folks live and die with their Huskies. Go to obituaries and you’ll find no shortage of descriptions of the deceased being a huge fan. It also is no exaggeration that multi-millions of dollars are spent and multimillions of dollars are brought in to a major state sports endeavor.

This isn’t about a loss of perspective. We understand the severity of the disease and the abrupt changes it forces on athletics. As Hurley said, it’s hard to complain about college basketball when there are so many real-life issues. Addressing the medical issues of the athletes is obviously paramount. We weren’t asking for a violation of HIPAA laws. No, this is about sports and being an accountable conduit to the public. There are communications people at the school to facilitate that mission. This is about the games. And as Allen Iverson would say, “We’re talking about practice. Practice!”

Last Thursday, when the school announced it had added a new season opener Saturday against UMassLowell, ESPN immediately posted a story about Paige Bueckers’ much- awaited college debut. Like we said, there is national interest on a daily basis in the 11time national champions. That’s one matter. This is another.

On Nov. 23, in UConn’s own release, it announced team activities had been suspended after a member of the program tested positive for COVID-19: “Per university protocol, team activities will remain on hold for at least 14 days and will resume when it is deemed safe by medical professionals.”

Practice was resumed in 10 days — the same day as the UMass-Lowell announcement. At that point, you’re not only hiding practices from the public, you’ve changed protocol without explanation. Geno Auriemma had said on Nov. 24 the positive test did not involve a player or coach. On Tuesday, Benedict said not everyone involved from a staffing standpoint was at Thursday’s practice and everyone was happy to have all the coaches back together Tuesday.

So were there more than the initial positive test? Is a coach involved, too? Seeing what we do know about the timeline, it makes you wonder how much more is there to this story. What are we missing?

Even Tuesday, after Benedict had answered a question about the school’s policy, I didn’t entirely understand it. Last Wednesday, while still citing the primary option of a 14-day quarantine period, the CDC did give two shorter alternatives based on local circumstances and resources. A 10-day quarantine without testing and no symptoms, and a sevenday quarantine with no symptoms and a negative test within 48 hours of quarantine discontinuation.

“As it relates specifically to your question about how the changes in the CDC recommendation impact our policies, procedures, protocols, they really don’t,” Benedict said. “They give you more options, but it doesn’t change how we go about things. Until we have more information and get further into the process of testing once we have a positive, we don’t know what we’re going to do. To say that we’re going to apply a seven-day quarantine every time someone tests positive is not how we’re going to handle things here. We’re going to work with our (state) DPH officials. We’re obviously going to work with our medical folks on campus. We’ll make the best decisions based on the information we’re gathering and everyone’s input.”

It sounds like UConn has a specifically tailored policy.

If it was announced that there would be a 14-day quarantine and there were no changes in the policies, procedures and protocols, how did it go from 14 days to 10 with the women? It deserved a simple explanation. On the surface, it seems like the school took the new CDC guideline from Wednesday and applied it Thursday. Fine. Say it.

Benedict called Dr. Deena Casiero, UConn director of sports medicine and head team physician, an “absolute superstar.” Someone who is a bridge between UConn athletics and the DPH. “A critical relationship and partnership,” he said.

Obviously, it’s a great plus. We’re also dealing with state officials, state universities, state agencies. Is what’s good for UConn good for Central Connecticut? And what about the private schools? The state endured a hell of a time with the CIAC and the DPH over the protocols involving high schools and independent athletic leagues. So let’s be entirely clear for the public to understand.

If there’s a protocol agreed upon between state university athletics, the state DPH and state officials, it should be available, oh, last Thursday.

“We obviously are not in that same 14-day quarantine pause we went through a couple of weeks ago,” Hurley said. “Depending on the test results with everyone in Tier One, that will determine whether it becomes seven days or as many as 10 days with people that test negative. Those that test positive will go a little longer with cardiac testing and some of the things they have to do return to the court. If they test negative and continue to test negative, you could be as short as seven days — if we have any luck.”

The way Hurley understood it, if negative tests kept coming, the Huskies could return Sunday to the court. That’s when they are scheduled to play at Georgetown. That game hasn’t been postponed yet.

“I don’t have any comment at this point in time,” Benedict said. “We’re still in the midst of gathering information. I’m sure we’ll have conversations with the league about that based on what we learned in the very near future. I don’t have any specific comments on that.”

“I’m not going to comment on that,” Hurley said. “I’d like to confer with my athletic director and the Big East Conference first. That’s a difficult timeline.”

It’s an impossible timeline to get ready. Move the game, already.

Look, this isn’t easy on anyone. On Tuesday, a rightfully frustrated Iona coach Rick Pitino tweeted, “So this weekend we were supposed to play Monmouth back to back. They went into a pause, so we rescheduled with Quinnipiac. Just heard that Quinnipiac has now paused, so we will now play Fairfield. Who’s on First.” Facepalm emoji.

Hey, my heart goes out to all these athletes and coaches.

After what’s happened here, professional responsibilities call for a written explanation of the state university protocols for COVID pauses.