The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Raising the bar
Benedict optimistic as program nears return to competition
As the UConn football team makes its final approach toward a long-awaited season, the possibly constricting realities of a pandemic that kept the team off the field in 2020 are being considered as closely as the Huskies’ competitive potential.
“The optimism — not relative to football, but relative to COVID — is, unfortunately, changing a little bit,” athletic director David Benedict said Friday. “That’s not necessarily giving me a lot of positive thoughts right now. There’s not a lot we can do to control that, outside of trying to get as many of our staff and student-athletes vaccinated.”
Some 17 months after the pandemic began and the sports world went dark, and just a couple of months since a euphoric return-to-normal feeling began to sweep the nation, athletic aspirations are again tempered by the potential for complications in areas of health, safety and logistics.
The Huskies haven’t played a game since November 2019, becoming a program out of sight and essentially out of mind for the better part of 20 months — which, considering the team’s recent body of work, was the best thing for the entire operation.
With rediscovered confidence, UConn opened preseason camp on Friday, the first of 25 preseason practices in advance of the opener Aug. 28 at Fresno State. Hopes and expectations are high in Storrs. The Huskies were 6-30 over their most recent three seasons. Coach Randy Edsall, now with an experienced roster that spent a year-plus exclusively on development, said Thursday the team is now in a position to win. And it will be expected to. Then again, wouldn’t success to any degree — maybe even just getting through a season on a pandemic tight-rope like many teams did last year — be particularly rewarding?
“No,” Benedict said. “Just holding it together is not necessarily the goal. We’ve got to win football games. The good news is I believe that’s happening . ... Physically, our team looks different. Athletically, our team looks different. So I think it’s going to be a fun year.”
Suddenly, though, the virus’ highly-transmissible delta variant, with its ability to break
through vaccinations, is lending an element of instability, even a slight sense of deja vu, to everyday life in general and college athletics specifically.
The world does not find itself in a March 2020 situation. But as the variant is further explored, and as it continues to spread, another area of unknown is upon us at a time when fall sports are being prepared for in earnest. There is recent evidence — local, disconcerting — for how quickly the coronavirus can throw off a sports plan and impact its people.
UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley and associate head coach Kimani Young were scheduled to attend the NBA draft to celebrate the selection of James Bouknight Thursday night in Brooklyn. They did not. Numerous members of the coaching staff either tested positive or are presumed positive because they are symptomatic. All are fully vaccinated.
“That’s a little bit depressing, because my outlook was very positive,” Benedict said. “But I’ve been involved in conversations with different medical experts that have unfortunately provided some sobering news and an outlook as it relates to what is maybe around the corner. The best thing for us to do is to continue to encourage people, young or old, to get vaccinated and follow the protocols and procedures that people are recommending. Being vaccinated right now is not enough. The good news is that people who are vaccinated and wind up getting a COVID case, at least at this point we haven’t heard of anything serious from a health standpoint. We’re in a better place, but we’re definitely not out of the woods.”
Success in football is
important to UConn. The university has invested millions of dollars in the sport over the years and has been losing more money — and too many games — since the program fizzled under Bob Diaco in 2016 and continued to struggle under Edsall since.
“Success is important regardless of sport, but football gets a lot of attention,” Benedict said. “Nationally, people talk about it. So, from a relevance standpoint, it’s very important that our football team is successful and I think this is the year we are going to see the results of Randy and his staff’s hard work over the past four years.
“Unfortunately, we don’t know, totally, what the fall holds. However, I have a great deal of confidence that, based on the vaccination rate of our football team, we shouldn’t have a problem playing this year — based on what we currently know. As we’ve gone through this year, we do know things change. But I’m pretty confident about that.”
Edsall said Thursday that 96 of 103 players are vaccinated, a rate of 93 percent that is representative of the student-athlete body at large, according to a UConn spokesperson.
During preseason practice, vaccinated players do not have to get tested for COVID-19 unless they are
symptomatic. Unvaccinated players will be tested multiple times per week and must adhere to advanced protocols and monitoring, essentially living the student-athlete existence everyone did in 2020.
If an unvaccinated player is deemed a close contact with somebody who tested positive, that player must quarantine for 10-14 days and produce multiple negative tests. Vaccinated players who are deemed a close contact must wear a mask until they produce a negative test result during days 3-5.
For road games, there are about 70 players in a travel party of about 130.
The Huskies cited health concerns and considered scheduling impossibilities when opting out of the 2020 season. Most opponents had or were about to announce a conference-only schedule, leaving Benedict to rebuild a UConn schedule he had already put together on the fly as the program transitioned out of the American Athletic Conference.
“Last year was a difficult decision,” Benedict said. “I do think we’re all going to be very pleased with the results of that decision. I just think our fans and people are going to see a team that is really developed over the past two years.”
It’s time to win.
And win back the portion of the state it lost — by losing — during its time in the AAC.
UConn’s average home attendance in the 2019 season was 18,216 (tickets distributed), or, even more distressing, 10,126 (tickets actually scanned).
Will the Huskies draw more fans this season? Is it entirely dependent on the team’s success?
“I think it’s entirely dependent on COVID,” Benedict said. “But I think there’s excitement around the program. Part of it is because we haven’t played in a while, and part of it is because there’s optimism. I think we’ve got a chance to really re-energize the fan base. But we’ve got to come out and show we’re competitive.”
COVID considerations will continue to be at the forefront of conversations about everything the team and program are trying to accomplish.
“If we go into the season with the idea that all of our facilities, regardless of sport, are going to be open and we have as many people as we want, I hope that’s the case,” Benedict said. “But, if not, we’ve got to have options. We’ve seen some of the professional franchises create sections for people who were unvaccinated, some people checked vaccination cards. We have to have a lot of conversations with the folks at the Capitol and DPH.
“We obviously want to have fans at our games and we will do everything in our control of power to allow for that to happen. But there’s only so much that we can control. The best way we can control the virus is to get as many people vaccinated as possible. But as we know, and as we know very intimately with the news (Thursday), just getting vaccinated isn’t enough.”