The athletic training room at Whiteland looks a bit different than it did four months ago.
Trainers Sarah Rowe and Travis Smarelli have placed Xs on the floor where waiting students can stand, setting clear limits on just how many athletes can be in the room at a time. If there’s no X available, you’ll just have to wait outside.
Every other training table has been blocked off; Rowe has put up memes from the classic teen film "Mean Girls" to let athletes know where they can’t sit.
High school workouts began this week under circumstances that are anything but normal — and while everyone is happy to be back in any capacity they can after four months with no school sports at all, the guidelines put forward by the governor’s office and the IHSAA are going to take some getting used to.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
Locker rooms are not to be used until at least July 20. No shared water bottles or hydration stations. In the weight room, any exercises involving a spotter are out. All non-athletes should wear face masks at all times, and only essential personnel should be in attendance.
Those represent just a portion of the restrictions and guidelines in place for the first phase of the preseason, which runs through the end of next week. There’s a lot to handle — longtime Center Grove athletic trainer Dave Buchholz says this return to action represents the greatest set of challenges he’s faced in his career.
"You just don’t know; it’s so fluid," he said. "You plan, and then you have to change your plans. Then you plan again, and you might have to change those plans again. If you are able to fluctuate and go with the flow and adjust on the fly, it’s a little easier, but it’s still not easy for anybody. If you’re a rigid schedule-keeper, man, this has got to be just driving you nuts."
The state has laid out three phases in the plan to gradually ramp back up to "normal" athletic activity, with the start date for Phase III (Aug. 15) coinciding with the first day of the regular season for all fall sports except girls golf (Aug. 3) and football (Aug. 21). That plan, of course, is subject to change depending on what happens to COVID-19 statistics here in Indiana — and the number of new cases did go back up by a fair amount last week after two months of decline and plateau.
All that county athletic trainers can do for now is play the hand that’s in front of them at the moment and adjust accordingly based on what’s working, what isn’t — and what changes, if any, the state chooses to make to the current plan.
"We’re going to see how it goes these first two weeks and then amend things from there," Rowe said.
At Edinburgh, the bleachers in the main gym have been sectioned off, with areas for members of each different team to leave their belongings before heading off to work out.
Ben Bingham, the Lancers’ athletic trainer, considers himself fortunate to be working at a smaller school right now. His stress level will still be elevated, but probably less so than many of his peers.
"Being able to keep an eye on 20 (football players) rather than what Center Grove, Franklin or Whiteland have, probably 100 from freshman to seniors, it’s easier for me to keep an eye on every individual kid," Bingham said.
Policing athletes when they’re on school grounds is one thing — between coaches, trainers and whatever other adults might be on hand, it should be possible to make sure that kids are doing what they’re supposed to do, especially since group sizes are being so strictly limited at the moment. But outside of those hours, students will be left to their own devices, and some people have pretty clearly been taking this pandemic more seriously than others.
Many officials are, therefore, treating the prospect of an outbreak at their school as all but inevitable. The hope is that by limiting how many people each student is in contact with, schools can at least prevent it from spreading too far within the athletic department.
"It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when, and how do we react," Buchholz said. "That’s why we’re trying to keep kids in smaller groups, so if somebody in one group comes back symptomatic or tests positive at some point, instead of wiping out these 40 kids, we’re just going to take these 10 that they’ve been with the whole time, and maybe a coach or something, and test them and monitor them."
The potential dangers could scare off some athletes or their families, especially in cases where a student or one of their relatives falls into a higher-risk category. Someone with asthma, diabetes or another condition that might leave them more vulnerable to COVID-19 might decide that these offseason workouts just aren’t worth the gamble.
Those decisions, Rowe says, are being left up to each individual family.
"A lot of it we’re leaving up to the kids and the parents and how comfortable they are," she said. "We’ve made it very clear that none of the summer stuff is mandatory; we can’t make it mandatory."
For those that do decide to take the plunge, schools will take additional precautions as needed on a case-by-case basis.
"If there’s something that I see or a coach sees, and we need to adjust something from a conditioning standpoint, or a kid is struggling, we’re going to adapt," Franklin athletic trainer Marcus Davis said.
There isn’t a soul alive right now that has navigated a situation like this in his or her lifetime; everybody is taking this journey through uncharted waters day by day. New challenges will undoubtedly pop up along the way.
What happens the first time an athlete tests positive? What if numbers across Indiana spike again as they have in many other states? What will happen as limitations on group sizes — and physical contact — are eased? No one can say for certain what the coming weeks will bring.
"Whatever it looks like," Davis said, "it’s not going to be normal."
