Ath­letic De­part­ment Pre­pares for Win­ter Sea­son

MISHAWAKA – Sarah Hauck, Bethel Uni­ver­sity head ath­letic trainer, did not an­tic­i­pate the amount of time she would be spend­ing on work re­lated to COVID-19.  

“It’s been more than I knew sign­ing up for say­ing that I would do this this fall,” Hauck said. “It has def­i­nitely been more than I pre­pared my­self for.” 

While her main job is work­ing with Bethel ath­letes and coaches, the ad­vent of COVID-19 changed her role in dra­matic ways. Now, with the fall sea­son com­ing to a close, Hauck said she knows now that she needs to re­main flex­i­ble. 

Ath­letic Di­rec­tor Tony Na­tali also noted the amount of flex­i­bil­ity it takes to man­age through a sea­son of sports. 

“I’ve learned you’ve got to be flex­i­ble be­cause prob­a­bly the biggest chal­lenge has been sched­ul­ing,” Na­tali said. “Games get­ting post­poned and then get­ting resched­uled an­other time.” 

But Na­tali said he has not faced too many sched­ul­ing is­sues on his end. Op­po­nents have more of­ten had to resched­ule games and matches with Bethel teams. 

De­spite the chal­lenges from COVID-19, Na­tali said he feels at peace with the way the fall sea­son turned out. While en­tire teams such as the men’s cross coun­try had to cease com­pe­ti­tion and prac­tice for two weeks, most Bethel teams re­mained el­i­gi­ble to play. 

Bethel Vol­ley­ball Coach Katie Weiss said one of her ath­letes had to be quar­an­tined at the be­gin­ning of the sea­son. De­spite the small set­back, Weiss said the ex­pe­ri­ence showed the team how se­ri­ous the COVID-19 pan­demic is. 

“I hon­estly think it was al­most a pos­i­tive thing … that some­one got quar­an­tined early only be­cause it helped us all re­al­ize, ‘Oh, this is se­ri­ous. This needs to be taken se­ri­ously,’” Weiss said. “So, I’m re­ally thank­ful. I think we’ve done a re­ally good job of min­i­miz­ing ex­po­sure and be­ing care­ful.” 

The biggest ad­just­ments for the vol­ley­ball team this sea­son came from their op­po­nents. Weiss said at one point more than three teams from the Cross­roads League had to post­pone or can­cel matches with Bethel due to COVID-19. 

Na­tali said the COVID-19 pro­to­cols the ath­let­ics de­part­ment fol­lowed for the fall sea­son will re­main the same for the win­ter sea­son. Ath­letes will still be re­quired to wear masks prior to their sched­uled com­pe­ti­tions and have tem­per­a­ture checks prior to en­ter­ing the Wiekamp Ath­letic Cen­ter. 

But as of Nov. 6, spec­ta­tors will no longer be al­lowed to at­tend home ath­letic events at Bethel. Ac­cord­ing to a Bethel ath­letic de­part­ment press re­lease, the spec­ta­tor pol­icy will be sus­pended un­til at least Nov. 15. 

The sus­pen­sion of the spec­ta­tor pol­icy is due to the rise of COVID-19 cases on Bethel’s cam­pus and in St. Joseph County. Ac­cord­ing to the Bethel Uni­ver­sity web­site, Bethel Uni­ver­sity is cur­rently ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the or­ange level on the risk level key.  

Even prior to the tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion in at­ten­dance pol­icy, Bethel sport­ing events had a dif­fer­ent at­mos­phere with less fans. Deb­o­rah Thomp­son, head coach of the Bethel swim­ming and div­ing teams, said schools like Bethel are livestream­ing the events for par­ents and fans un­able to at­tend them in per­son. 

“At least the par­ents can watch that,” Thomp­son said. “It’s not the same as be­ing [in per­son], but at least it’s some­thing.” 

Like fall ath­letes, win­ter sport ath­letes have to quar­an­tine for two weeks if they come into con­tact with some­one with COVID-19. Ath­letes re­port­edly have had some dif­fi­culty read­just­ing to the prac­tice regime im­me­di­ately af­ter they are cleared to prac­tice again. 

Swim­ming and div­ing ath­letes face the unique chal­lenge of not be­ing able to swim at all dur­ing quar­an­tine. Thomp­son said she tells her ath­letes to con­tinue con­di­tion­ing on their own by run­ning out­side or com­plet­ing small work­outs in­side. 

“It prob­a­bly takes an­other cou­ple weeks to get … used to swim­ming,” Thomp­son said. “What hurts us is when they have to miss the meets … be­cause that to­tally changes our lineup and re­lays.” 

In ad­di­tion to quar­an­ti­ning and fol­low­ing COVID-19 pro­to­cols, the best pre­ven­ta­tives for ath­letes are to eat healthy and rest. 

Steve Drabyn, head coach of men’s bas­ket­ball, en­cour­aged stu­dents to take care of them­selves. 

“You just try to eat well, drink a lot of wa­ter, lot of flu­ids,” Drabyn said. “You take vi­t­a­min C and those kinds of things. That’s kind of all you can do.”