Clemson athletics director Dan Radakovich told the school’s board of trustees Friday that the athletics department now has no active coronavirus cases and no staff or student-athletes remain in quarantine.
Radakovich’s update came during an open session during the quarterly meeting of the Clemson Board of Trustees and it follows a month of largely bad news regarding positive tests. Through July 10, the school had conducted 722 tests with 53 positives, including 47 student-athletes.
The school’s guidelines required all those who tested positive as well as anyone they’d had extended contact with to quarantine for 14 days.
Radakovich told the Board of Trustees that the school has now performed over 800 tests, with the next round of testing coming August 3, which will include all fall sports student-athletes.
Radakovich said the school remains on schedule to begin practices for fall sports in early August, including opening camp for football on Aug. 5. The ACC has delayed the start of all fall competitions until Sept. 1, but that currently does not impact the football schedule.
Radakovich said that the ACC’s board of governors are expected to make additional recommendations on schedules no later than Aug. 5 but, “given the scope of the pandemic, those could be fluid the entire fall.”
Clemson also surveyed about 8,500 of its football season ticket holders to get feedback on how football should proceed, with 83% of respondents saying they were “comfortable” attending games this fall with proper social distancing measures. Additionally, 54% said they preferred a fall football season without fans in the stands to a potential spring season in which fans would be allowed to attend, while only 21% said they would tailgate on campus even without tickets to see the game.
“[Attendance] is still in flux,” Radakovich said. “Many models have been pulled together on that and hopefully in the next three weeks we’ll move forward with more specific detail associated with what capacity opportunities we’ll have for Memorial Stadium.”