With a game at East Carolina scheduled for "Week Zero" of the college football season, no team is more eager to charge into the weight room than the Marshall Thundering Herd.
"We have to get those kids ready to play, and to have them here with our strength coaches and to have them in the weight room is significant," Marshall athletic director Mike Hamrick told Huntington, W.V.-based NBC affiliate WSAZ on Thursday. "I was around several of our kids yesterday, and they're excited."
With the typical excitement that accompanies a new training camp comes the unprecedented concern for student-athlete health and wellbeing amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Hamrick outlined safety measures that Marshall will be implementing. "Our athletes are here. Our football guys are quarantined right now for 10 days, then they will be tested next week, and then they'll have to be quarantined for three or four more days," he said. "And then we'll start the workout process."
What will that look like? "They'll be divided up where there'll be social distancing while they're working out," Hamrick said. "For example, a bench press will be here and six feet away will be a squat rack, and as soon as those football guys finish with that we'll have some people that will disinfect those machines immediately."
In addition, all personnel involved with workout sessions will wear face masks.
"There's one goal of a new normal and that's keep people safe," Hamrick said. "There's no playbook for this, this is unprecedented. We're dealing with it."
