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(lively string music) - Hi, I'm Rhea Jha, after initially canceling all fall athletics due to COVID-19, the Big Ten reversed their decision and has allowed football to resume.

But what are the challenges of conducting sports during this pandemic and what needs to be done to keep players, coaches, and staff members safe?

On this episode of Digging Deeper, Penn State president Eric Barron talks to Charmelle Green, senior associate athletic director of student athlete performance and health and welfare.

Renee Messina, assistant athletic director for athletic training services and Josh Nelson, assistant athletic director of applied health and performance science.

- So thanks for joining me, interesting topic today in terms of what's happening to college sports in the midst of a pandemic.

And we know COVID changed and interrupted a lot of different things and and it certainly has for athletics.

Maybe you could start, we know we lost men and women's basketball tournament, what did that feel like for the program, for the students, for the coaches and the people that work in Penn state athletics?

- Yeah, I'll go ahead and start, Dr. Barron, first I want to say thank you so much for having us on your show, this is truly an honor to allow us to share our stories and all that we're doing to help our students compete and train in a healthy and safe manner.

With that been said that, you know, I recall when the decision was made to put a pause on all the sports, I was actually traveling to Albuquerque New Mexico to join our track and field team at the national championships and in route to New Mexico, I got the call that the championship was canceled, and that we need to get our student athletes back to campus.

And that was quite a blow.

It was quite a shock to the system.

We were hopeful that the season would be able to, we'd be able to end with the championship for our winter sports and that didn't happen.

We had a student athletes who were in pursuit of a national championship and that certainly was a blow to them.

And so we just had to, while it was a shock to the system, we had to begin quickly thinking about how do we, you know, stabilize our student athletes?

How do we get them back to campus and begin to help you help heal from the blow of a season being canceled?

- So maybe each of you would say, you know, well, so Charmelle has just given us this perspective on how it feels especially if you're going for a national championship and it's then the end and I can imagine as a senior, how tough that might be, but if we switch from the student athlete viewpoint, why is it so important to get athletics and college competitions back to normal?

- Go ahead, Renee.

- Yeah, yeah, you know, I just think that there's, there's such a large component of, what college athletics and what sports provides to our student athletes you know, from a health and welfare standpoint, from a mental health component, obviously student athletes competing at this level here have largely committed, you know much of their teenage years and, you know, since they were very young training to become an elite athlete.

And as you know, we have many athletes that have an opportunity to compete beyond Penn State in the professional realm, obviously in the Olympics and I think that the other component of this last year, when this was all suspended we had athletes that were training to potentially be Olympians as well.

So I think the opportunity to allow our student athletes to get back to doing what they've devoted so much of their life to doing, I think is really important, not just from a physical health and welfare standpoint, but from a mental health as well.

- Josh, do you have something you wanna add there?

- Yes, Sir, absolutely.

You know, definitely thank you for having us on, it's great to meet you today but jumping off of what Renee mentioned, I think the university model that is college athletics it's a community, you know?

And especially here at Penn State, many of our athletes even across sport lines, they draw off one another and talk about the opportunity for development, not just on the field or the court or the training room but you know, growing up as men and women.

So I think that opportunity, I think that in itself is a massive reason why we want to get them back on the field is it provides such a great opportunity for growth as an athlete but just as a person in the college community.

- So I appreciate that and to tell you the truth I really appreciate that the three of you have been talking about students and the importance for students and the importance, I also am struck by the fact that the country sorta needs this to feel like they're normal.

Everybody's always talking about this new normal.

Is there a sense that college competitions just make you feel like this is the way the world is supposed to be?

Is that overstating it, do you think?

- Go ahead, Renee.

- Yeah, I don't think so.

- Yeah.

- You know, obviously I'm somebody that's made a career in college athletics.

Yeah, I've been here at Penn State for 29 years.

So for me, I don't think it's overstating it.

I do think that there's so much that college athletics brings you know, not only to our community but to communities across our country and you know, obviously beyond that.

So I do not, I don't, I do think it's critically important and it plays a large role.

- Well, maybe each one of you could also tell me your personal reaction when the Big Ten voted to go back to have football and then maybe you could give me a hint of what it was like inside intercollegiate athletics in addition to your personal opinion when the message came out that the president had voted to resume a Big Ten schedule.

- Yes, well first I want to say thank you for making that decision, that was a really important decision.

And Renee had talked about the, all the work that goes into pursuing excellence not only in the classroom, but in sport.

And the time that that our students have devoted, their time and energy to being great and skilled at their sport.

It was exciting to know that we have something to look forward to 'cause we had been planning for a great deal of time, putting together strategies for a safe and healthy return to sport, return to training, it involved a lot of leaders including yourself and vice president for intercollegiate athletics, Sandy Barber, and many members of your leadership team Dr. Barron that were instrumental in allowing us to pursue and activate the strategy that we put together to bring our students back and allow them to train and to begin getting themselves into the condition to compete.

What was really important for us and obviously for the chancellors and presidents is making sure that we did it the right way.

And we were really prepared.

We just wanted to get the green light, the thumbs up.

And once you gave us the thumbs up, we knew that we had a great strategy in place to return our student athletes in a healthy and safe way.

Following the guidelines from the climatization, return to sport, as well as all of the requirements from the COVID-19 standpoint and CDC and university requirements.

We knew that we had a great plan in place that would allow us to do it very, very well.

So thank you again for making the decision to allow us to come back and begin to compete again because it just builds the comradery and the excitement, not only for our student athletes, but for students in general.

- Either of the other two want to comment on how you reacted?

- Go ahead, Josh.

- Yes, I was gonna say, I think the biggest thing for me Dr. Barron, was just an overwhelming sense of joy, you know, from the ground level.

And Charmelle mentioned this a second ago, just seeing the commitment in a very unique training setting that our student athletes committed to throughout the summer months.

And then even before that, before they were back on campus, the level of commitment that was put in to preparation and then it was taken away momentarily and then brought back and just felt this sense of just joy for the student athletes and then from the staff, all the hard work that went in from members of the performance team led by Charmelle to people that, not necessarily within our group, but supported all of that.

Joy would be the first thing that comes to my mind.

- Well, good mine too.

Renee, do you have something you want to add there?

- Yeah, yeah, I mean I certainly agree both with Charmelle and with Josh.

And I think the the one piece to add is that, you know, you had a group of individuals that started working towards that goal back in March.

Very, very early, you know, started trying to plan about what, you know, what the future might look like and creating a plan to bring our students back to campus safely and back to training safely and starting, you know, pre-season camp and then when that decision came down that the fall seasons were gonna be suspended.

I mean, without a doubt, I don't think, every one of us here had a level of disappointment but I do think it was the right decision at the right time.

You know, I do.

I think that there was a lot of still uncertainty about how to conduct college athletics and our fall sports and the uncertainty of the arrival of students back to campus and what that might do to our community.

So I do think that that was, you know, the right decision given where we were and what was going on at the time.

Very disappointing obviously for our student athletes and for all of our staff involved, but, you know nonetheless, I do think it was appropriate.

And when the decision came about to return sports, to allow football to move forward, without a doubt joy, just knowing that a lot of the work that was put forth to reach that point, that we were going to be able to see that come to fruition and allow our student athletes an opportunity to take the field once again.

- Yeah, I appreciate that.

And you know and just listening to you, there's two pieces when you say, at least two pieces when you say to keep the athletes healthy, so one part of this is, is the conditioning and practice and so maybe you could describe a little bit about what the risks were and why this is so important to have have those time periods and how hard did you work over the summer on this topic?

- Renee, do you wanna start?

- Josh, go ahead.

- Okay, yes Sir.

So, early on, before there was even a timetable to return athletes, members of various groups across athletics began working on what that may look like as far as organizing facilities, how we were going to train athletes, how we were going to test athletes and to keep them spaced to maintain a safe distance.

We basically started really, really small and simple, following guidelines that had been put out from the state.

And from even larger, we tried to keep small groups, various wide spaces, open spaces, all of our athletes use masks at all times.

And we just tried to get back into normal.

You know, we had been away from normal training for, you know, several months and for me where our lens and Coach Gull's lens is about performance and moving athletes forward.

That's frightening is when athletes are away from the training facility for a period of time, because you're worried about some potential acute injuries that could occur rapidly.

So just going slow, not trying to do too much too quickly, but then at the same time, understand that we gotta, we gotta come back slowly and bring groups sizes a little bit larger.

And, you know our kids were amazing at following our guidelines and then just following the plan, trusting the plan.

- Yeah, so it's incredibly important that you just can't walk out there and do it, you need that conditioning or you end up with injuries and potentially for the future harming someone's participation.

So the other side of this is the testing part of it.

And, you know, whereas the Big 10 presidents thought that we couldn't keep our students safe from COVID in a field of play and in a high of contact earlier in the summer, we really came to view our ability to do testing and monitoring as an opportunity to get back to play.

So what's the testing environment for students like?

This is every day, get up and take a test and we're not testing your algebra.

- Yeah, so it's largely my staff that's doing, the athletic training staff that's doing the testing of our student athletes and of our coaches and staff members.

And you know, I think from the very beginning, you know we've seen a transition in what that testing looks like.

Whether we were initially using a third-party lab, sending tests out and then eventually over time, utilizing the testing platform that our university uses for our students.

And eventually now to where we are with the Big Ten testing with the antigen, the antigen program.

And I will say that our student athletes and our staff have been very committed to doing what we have put forth, you know, with regard to all of the safety protocols, but also the testing and making sure that we have results.

And if we have individuals that are symptomatic they're withheld and just making sure that we take all all the steps that we can to make our training environments safe for our student athletes.

And with regard to the daily antigen testing that some of our programs are doing now, it can be greuling.

I mean, without a doubt, it's a six day a week testing protocol.

And again, I think our student athletes and our coaches and everyone are just grateful for the opportunity to compete and they're willing to do whatever it takes and if it means getting up every day at seven o'clock or whatever it might be to report for testing, you know, they're doing that.

Again, it's about being committed to whatever it takes to be able to move forward and compete.

- You know, it is a remarkable system done with the help of a third party, the Big Ten paying for the tests and it really does give you a lot of confidence in some ways, but now, I started with this comment about how do we feel about having football back?

But in fact, the presidents, when they voted said we're not voting on football, we're voting on fall sports.

These are athletes that have gifts and they're getting an education and we need to to further those gifts.

But now that means we got a much larger pool of students.

How, is it hard to have them all behave well?

Is that the right way to say it?

I think some people might say oh, I get tested every single day, I'm gonna know what's going on here, I can relax.

But are our student athletes relaxing?

It seems like we've had a very low caseload and not a situation in football, like some schools.

- Yeah, you know Dr. Barron, you know I think the success that we've had has been attributed to this collaboration and the education that we develop to really send a strong message to our student athletes, that you gotta be all in.

And while, you know, some may see this as sacrifices, we see it as opportunity and our student athletes see it as opportunity and so, it's this all in, in this together, one team, mentality that has allowed us to be incredibly successful because as you've mentioned, this is a lot of work.

When you think about 800 plus student athletes testing so that they can train in a safe and healthy manner, that's a lot.

And these are additional responsibilities that our staff have taken on to allow this to happen and allow us to execute it in a very successful way.

As well as those who are getting our facilities ready, who are making sure that when we do have issues, that our facilities are cleaned, that our programs are stopped and paused to allow us to address the issues and then return them in a healthy and safe way.

This has been a huge undertaking for us.

We had had to do a lot of work, but I tell you what, I couldn't be more proud of our university as well as our staff who have just stepped in and said let's make sure that we do this and we do it well.

- You know, I thank you for that.

And I also think people would be very interested in knowing what would happen if a coach tested positive?

Or an athlete tested positive, what happens?

- Renee.

- Yeah, yeah, so again, it's generally my staff that's discovering that.

And the first conversation is with the student athlete about their test results.

And then we very, very quickly begin contact tracing efforts to support the needs of the department of health and contact tracing here at Penn State.

So, you know, I mean we are very quickly trying to identify who else might be at risk, who else was potentially exposed to this individual and working with them to try to do everything that we can to you know, potentially contain any spread.

And we've been really successful with that, with messaging to our student athletes that do test positive the importance of them to enter into isolation housing, whether it's the university isolation housing or you know, if they are in an apartment where they can have their own bedroom and their own private bathroom that would allow them to be separate and isolated from any roommates.

And you know, we've been really Swift in that process.

You know, when we identify someone.

We get them into isolation usually within hours.

And if they have their own place we message to them immediately.

If it requires the university isolation, we get a message out to our university contact tracers and normally within a couple hours they are into an isolation or quarantine facility.

And I think it's important again it's about, my goal is that and my staff is obviously to make sure that we can ensure that you know, try to protect their program, their roommates and their team, but also, we know that our teams interact with one another so immediately we want to, we want to minimize that interaction with other programs.

And it's pretty swift action I would say on our part.

- Well good, I'm glad, that's important.

You know it's a fascinating thing to think about and I wish we had more time, but truly, truly that that 20 minutes just disappeared incredibly quickly and not, I sadly don't have the time to ask another question but you can all quickly nod if you think next fall we'll be back to normal.

Okay, I hope so.

Thank you so much for joining me, just fascinating.

- Wonderful, thanks for having us.

- Thanks for having us.

- Yes, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- So thank you Dr. Barron for being here and talking about an issue that affects everyone associated to Penn State, but students especially.

So what do you think the impact has been on students and fans with the absence of in-person games and because the aroma of the arena is like so exciting for everyone.

So what do you think that impact has been?

- You know, I think it is really significant in a lot of ways, I mean, the first thing is to have a safe field of play but then, you know, there is so much spirit, so much energy, you know, I had a student tell me I just want to go in the stadium.

I want to know what it feels like and think about the freshmen that you know, this is part of that Penn State experience.

And that you don't have it or the notion of no whiteout.

So I think it is really profound but I think the first priority is the safety of the athletes.

And then to be able to have them complete, complete a season because their future in many ways depends on it and we're all about getting students to the finish line.

So that's our priority, first priority, Safely get those students to the finish line with their gifts but I surely miss having it be in person.

- Yeah, so do you think school spirit has declined a little bit?

Or with the return of like the Big Ten do you think that picked up very quickly?

- You know, I suppose the opportunity for school spirit has declined, but there are many, many people that suggest that really what's happening is we're creating this pent-up demand.

And you know, I see it in the alumni and in the students where you know, the new football message that says "Dear Pennsylvania," you know alumns will tell me it creates this tingle, this sort of goose bump feeling for them, and so the spirit is still there, I think it is just waiting to come bursting forth to tell you the truth.

- Definitely, so how do you think, this is my last question.

How do you think this will change the future for Penn State athletics and even for the fans and students as well, even next year?

- Yeah, so I do think next year, things will be a lot better I certainly hope that they will be a lot better.

You know, I do worry about some of the financial impacts on athletics and on the community because everybody depends on athletics in so many different ways.

So I do worry about those things but I think you know, we'll continue to attract great students and great athletes and we're just gonna be ready for those opportunities to come back and we'll be right back there enjoying them.

- Yeah, well I'm excited for that and I'm sure you are too.

So, thank you for talking to me.

It was a pleasure.

- My pleasure, thank you!

- Support for Digging Deeper, comes from the Penn State Alumni Association, connecting alumni to the university and to each other.

The Alumni Association is powered by pride.

Learn more at Alumni.PSU.edu and from viewers like you, thank you.