MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia coach Neal Brown is facing a small dilemma as the Mountaineers continue to drudge through the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s been nine weeks since the last time players and coaches were allowed to do team activities in person, and with other issues with the coronavirus — financial, health and mental well-being — on top of not being able to play football, there is fatigue setting in for everyone involved.
Players are getting worn out with Zoom meetings and calls, but Brown wants to make it a point Monday-Friday to have face-to-face contact between the coaches and players. With eyes on the players, coaches can get a feel for how each is doing emotionally during this time of social distancing and having their lives flipped upside down.
“There’s just so many unknowns and you don’t know,” Brown said Wednesday. “Every aspect of this profession, every aspect of being a player … there’s always, ‘Hey, this is next.’ You finish spring ball then you got finals, then you get a break, then you got summer. You get a little break for 4th of July, then you got four more weeks then you’ve got fall camp, then you’ve got the season, then you’ve got bowl season, then you’ve got winter. Everything’s planned and you know what it is, so it’s a real struggle when you take that structure out and you can’t answer questions. We just don’t know.”
The NCAA currently permits eight hours per week for coaches to meet with players virtually, but the WVU staff doesn’t even try to meet that total because it wears on everyone to meet that long virtually and to keep everyone’s attention.
With that said, Brown wants to meet at least once a day during the work week for check-ins, especially since many have handled the pandemic differently with stress and other situations that may have them feeling down.
“When I talk about player health and wellness, that is the main thing — I want to see them on one of these meetings where I can look, because I know the kids, and I can tell something is off,” Brown said. “If there’s something off, then OK, let’s start asking the questions. Maybe they just woke up, maybe they lost somebody, maybe somebody has the virus that they know, maybe they’re having some financial problems. That’s why we try to have eyeball contact Monday-Friday so we can get a good picture of how they’re doing. It has little to do with the game of football. It has little to do with academics. It has mostly to do with are they safe and are they well?”
Brown said, like more organizations with over 100 people, there have been struggles for players and staff, and the team has been able to help, but it’s an ongoing process.
The target date for in-person contact is May 31 with the Big 12, and Brown hopes “the powers that be” wait as long as possible to that date before making another decision on whether to extend it or open it up in June.
Stadium construction
Construction at Milan Puskar Stadium, mainly the Puskar Center and new video board in the south end zone, remains on schedule, if not a bit ahead, according to Brown.
“They’ve gotten more work done and have been able to work longer hours because they haven’t had to work around our schedule,” he said. “They began the process on the video board, so those have been positive.”
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