PSU reports no COVID-19 in athletes
Penn State director of athletics Sandy Barbour said Wednesday that 102 athletes participating in voluntary workouts on campus have been tested for COVID-19 and that none has tested positive.
Speaking with the media for the first time in more than three months, Barbour said that Penn State has and will test athletes upon their campus arrival and if they’re showing any symptoms of COVID-19, at least until the fall semester begins in late August.
“We have, as a university and as an athletic department, made a decision that we will report those results every two weeks,” she said during an hour-long video conference. “We’ll do it on Wednesdays. We will make those public every two weeks up until when the university returns all of our students. Then we’ll make a decision how those results might be folded (into Centre County testing numbers).”
Some but not all members of Penn State’s football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s soccer, women’s soccer and women’s volleyball teams have returned to campus for voluntary
workouts.
The 102 athletes do not include men’s and women’s soccer and women’s volleyball athletes who returned to campus earlier this week. Barbour said some athletes from the six teams have not yet returned to campus.
“It’s not huge,” she said. “Some of those actually were not COVID related. They were, ‘I’m not ready to come back right now.’ We are highly discouraging that they leave, because when they return they will have to be retested and requarantined.”
If a Penn State athlete decides not to return to campus for the fall semester, Barbour said their scholarship will be honored.
“We’ve been really clear about that,” she said. “This is all about their health and safety, and an element of their health and safety is their comfort. We have at every turn indicated that it is their decision. Their scholarship is not in jeopardy at all.”
Barbour said that Penn State will not announce test results of staff and employees, but they will be included in the Centre County numbers. If a player, coach or staff member does test positive for coronavirus, they will be isolated or quarantined for at least 14 days.
“Depending on whether it’s a student and where they live, that could be at home,” Barbour said.
Penn State president Eric Barron said last week that the university will use the 223-room Nittany Lion Inn, which has been closed since March, to quarantine students who test positive. In-person classes are scheduled to resume in the fall.
Barbour said Penn State will not ask athletes to sign a COVID-19 waiver, even though schools like Ohio State have.
“We do have what we are calling our One Team Pledge that all of our student-athletes and coaches eventually will sign,” Barbour said. “All that is a reiteration of all the educational stuff, all of the protocols, and an acknowledgement of the importance to themselves, their teammates, their coaches and how important following these protocols are.”
Barbour said the athletic department hasn’t yet determined how many fans will be permitted inside Beaver Stadium or other campus venues for games. But she echoed what Barron said last week, that there will be nothing close to capacity crowds for home football games this fall.
“I can say with certainty that without a season ticket, no matter what our capacity is, you’re probably not coming to a Penn State game this year,” she said. “I appreciate our fans and their fanaticism for Penn State football. We hope to be able to reward them with a safe and healthy opportunity to come and watch Penn State football this year.
“The different scenarios we’re looking at would be to try to accommodate as many of our season-ticket holders as we possibly can.”
Barbour said that Penn State officials might limit parking lots and areas around Beaver Stadium to fans who have tickets for a game.
The Penn State athletic department hasn’t cut salaries or jobs during the coronavirus pandemic. But because of the uncertainty about whether games will be played, Barbour said pay cuts seem inevitable.
Facing a $26 million budget shortfall, Michigan recently announced that football coach Jim Harbaugh, men’s basketball coach Juwan Howard and president Warde Manuel would take 10 percent pay cuts starting in August.
“To be fair to all of our employees, I think the time is coming,” Barbour said. “We’ve now gotten into the next fiscal year. We probably need to do that and will do that within the next few weeks.
“We’re looking at reduced crowds in Beaver Stadium, Pegula (Ice Arena), the BJC, Rec Hall and our other venues. We’re looking at significant reduction in revenues. We have to figure out how to do that. Given the severity of what we anticipate might be coming, pay reductions are probably unavoidable.”