Texas Tech on Tuesday reported 21 active cases of COVID-19 within its football program, but will continue to practice without those who have been placed in self isolation to prevent further spread of the virus.
Since the middle of June, when the athletic department began transitioning student-athletes back to campus, the athletic department has completed a total of 1,382 tests for COVID-19 among its student-athletes, coaches and staff with 64 total positive cases. The positivity rate was 4.6 during that span. Of the positive cases, 24 remain active, including the 21 within the Red Raider football program.
Texas Tech coach Matt Wells said Tuesday that 20 of those positives were players and one was to a young coach who is not a full-time staff member. Wells also said that some players are being quarantined because they were identified as close contacts but did not specify how many.
When asked about the decision to continue practicing despite the number of positives, Wells said he felt comfortable with how many players he had available that were unaffected. Most FBS college football rosters have upwards of 120 players.
“We followed all the protocols in here, and you just look at your numbers, and there’s plenty of guys to practice,” Wells said. “But when you practice the way we practice, which is extremely fast, and I believe very efficient … when you start getting a few less numbers, then you change the way you practice a little bit. … We’re still going as fast as we normally do, but we’ve just altered the way we’ve practiced but I think again, our guys have handled it really well.”
Wells said a scrimmage that was supposed to take place over the weekend was modified after he learned of the positive results, with it eventually being adjusted to a regular practice. He said no position groups have been “wiped out” by the positive tests and they have kept practice lengths the same.
“We’ve just set the amount of reps that we’re going to take in a period and we take them. So we don’t overwork the players and we don’t over-rep them,” he said. “And so the guys that are healthy and, and [testing] negative, they get their reps just like everybody was here, and then they just maybe get a little bit more rest and so we haven’t cut practice back in terms of time because that would be too many reps and less time which equals overwork and I’m not going to do that.
“And our players have responded really well.”
Texas Tech has tested every member of the program weekly since late July when the Red Raiders began walk-through practices as allowed by the NCAA. Texas Tech will soon move to testing three times per week under the Big 12’s requirements for high-risk sports.
As part of the school’s established safety protocols, any student-athlete that has tested positive for COVID-19 has been immediately placed in self-isolation. According to the release from the school, affected student-athletes receive daily monitoring and care from Texas Tech’s sports medicine staff with additional oversight by the City of Lubbock Health Department.
Per local and state regulations, all positive tests have been reported to the City of Lubbock Health Department and contact tracing has been implemented, according to the school’s announcement. The school said its sports medicine staff “continues to monitor the health and well-being of all its student-athletes through daily assessment of symptoms and temperature checks upon entry to all athletic facilities.”
Wells said his team takes numerous precautions during practice, including wearing masks and having splash guards on players’ helmets. Wells said he wears a face shield at practices. He also said the vast majority of his team has most of their classes online or virtual.
Wells said he and his coaching staff were prepared for this instance based on the planning they’ve done over the course of the pandemic.
“It’s an opportunity to kind of put into play what me and the coaches and Dave Scholz, our strength coach and Drew Krueger, our trainer, what we kind of thought up during the summer: ‘Hey, if we have some positives and our numbers go down just a little bit, we’re going to we’re going to try this from a practice standpoint,'” Wells said. “Because I believe I have a sincere responsibility as the head coach to keep the healthy, [tested] negative, young men in the program sharp and their conditioning at a high level, and then wrap our arms around the guys that are in quarantine.”