Student-athletes discuss COVID-19 experiences at OBU
ARKADELPHIA — Ouachita Baptist University campus physician Dr. Wesley Kluck recently used Facebook to outline some of the lessons he’s learned dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic this fall.
He sat down with The Sentinel-Record to talk about some of his observations. Kluck said he believes his experience shows residential college campuses can have in-person classes, athletics, and student life activities and control the spread as long as they follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and conduct contact tracing so they can get any cases under control.
“We tracked no infections back to the classroom,” Kluck said, noting they were wearing masks and social distancing in class. All of their classes were available remotely, as well, he said, to those who were quarantining, those who had relatives who were at risk, or those who didn’t feel comfortable in the classroom.
Kluck said outside activities, such as showing movies outside, didn’t cause much of a spread, either. In fact, Kluck said most of the spread came from hanging out in the dorms, going on car rides together, or other group activities.
He said when it came to dorms, only roommates and suitemates were allowed to have close contact, otherwise, there were normal COVID-19 precautions, including social distancing and masks, in other parts of the dorm and no outside dorm guests were allowed. Kluck said they provided a place to stay and food if a student couldn’t go home and needed to isolate or quarantine. Otherwise, the students went home and did remote learning.
Kluck said they have been tracking cases with the help of internal contact tracers. He said they trained resident assistants, resident and hall directors, and athletic trainers for the job. In his Dec. 7 post, Kluck said internal contract tracers made around 10,500 phone calls.
Contact tracer supervisor Kristi Seals said students have been receptive to contact tracing.
“They’ve loved having somebody from their school reach out to them while they’re in quarantine or isolation just to check on them, see how things are going,” she said, noting nursing students were also helping out with contact tracing.
While she said they haven’t gotten any pushback from OBU students, Seals stressed the importance of the practice for anyone who is anxious about cooperating.
“If we know that we’ve been in contact with someone, it’s only right for them to know that they need to be more care
ful and they need to quarantine,” she said. “It really just helps everybody out when we’re honest and truthful about who we’ve been around.”
Kluck said athletes were probably the most likely group to get COVID-19.
“Athletes by nature of what they do are at higher risk of becoming exposed and infection with any virus; this is due to close friendships, contact in practices, dressing rooms, etc. Ouachita athletes were allowed by the NCAA to have contact practices during the fall even though there were no games,” wrote Kluck in a Dec. 8 Facebook post.
However, Kluck told the newspaper he thinks most of the spread through athletes came from hanging out together rather than at practice.
The Sentinel- Record spoke with several student- athletes who agreed with Kluck’s opinion.
“I feel like it didn’t come from, like, us practicing and stuff as, like, the football team because our athletic training staff preached on social distancing,” said senior football player Gregory Junior. “If you don’t have your helmet on, have your mask over your nose, over your face.”
Junior said he was diagnosed with COVID-19 at the beginning of November, dealing with fatigue, headaches, and body aches. He thinks he probably got it at a social gathering, something like going out to eat at restaurants. He said he wasn’t doing anything “serious” socially before he got the virus, but he changed his social interactions after.
“Just because, the pain that I went through, I wouldn’t want anybody else to go through that, so I just stopped going out. I just went to class, football, and back to my apartment,” he said.
Senior soccer player Ashlyn Heckman said she, too, thinks most people who got it were hanging out outside of practice or from their roommates. She said she never got it because she lives with a nonathlete. Heckman also said they wore face coverings if they were standing around during practice.
Junior Cannon Fisher, who cheers at OBU, said he’s seen a lot of students go out and party on the weekends, but he didn’t really see a whole lot of spread just from being at campus.
Fisher said, for the majority, his professors have been good about making sure students were making masks.
“But, there were a few times that I just felt like we got a little comfortable, but then a few days next, they would say, let’s remember to wear our masks,” he said.
However, that’s the only thing he could think of when asked if there was anything about the pandemic response he would change. He, along with the other two students, thought the university had done a good job in handling the pandemic.
Kluck said they won’t be changing any protocols for the spring semester, and he can’t think of anything they overlooked.
“Ouachita really did think about everything, and, you know, still tried to make it seem normal within, like, a pandemic,” said Fisher.
Look on The Sentinel- Record’s app or visit its website at hotsr.com for video interviews with the students about their experience last semester.