The current Michigan athletics shutdown hasn’t been easy for the student-athletes or the coaches and staff, U-M athletic director Warde Manuel said Saturday. They were well underway with several of their seasons and about to start with the majority of their sports when the state recommendation came down to pause all sports.

It seemed to come as a surprise to Manuel, too, evident during his In The Trenches Podcast interview in which he joined former U-M All-American Jon Jansen.

Despite the disappointment, the athletes have proven resilient, Manuel said, and will be ready to get back after it. Feb. 7 remains the earliest they’ll return to practice.

“Our head coaches are showing great leadership. Our student athletes are leading the effort to continue to do the things necessary to prevent COVID individually and on their teams and collectively,” Manuel said. “This is the case where the state felt we needed to take a two-week pause and quarantine to try to stop the spread particularly of this variant which spreads very quickly.”

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Manuel added he’d had individual meetings with his staff this week to see how they were getting through it with their teams. To a person, he said, the coaches were saying it was a “shock” and hard to deal with, but the student-athletes have bonded and are doing everything they need so the issue won’t continue to be a concern for their teams or the department.

“We’ve had teams that have had to stop and quarantine in order to prevent the spread on those individual teams. The difference is those teams have been able to come out of it as doctors allowed them to continue practicing again. This is a two-week shutdown,” he noted. “We’ve closed the facilities, no practice, not letting them be in the facilities to work out even though the super majority of our athletes are not afflicted or have an issue with COVID.

“After the two weeks, then the transition will begin. That’s the biggest difference right now. It hearkens us back to March when this first happened where we shut the facilities down. That’s the biggest change … that they’re at their homes, in their dorm rooms, allowed to go for walks and or jog by themselves, but that’s different than actually working on each of their sports.”

That will be the biggest challenge … shaking off the rust. Manuel made it clear they won’t resume practice one day and play a game the next; for basketball, for example, the next game on the schedule is Thursday, Feb. 11, so they’d have a few days to prepare.

“There is a plan in place per sport and it relates to when they will be able to return to competition, and that is done in concert with our medical staff, trainers and coaches to make sure our student athletes will come back safely in that case,” Manuel continued. “You don’t want to restart practice Monday and then have a competition on Tuesday because it was scheduled that way before. This is going to take a little time to get them back to what we call a re-socialization into their particular sports.

“Some sports are going to be able to come back quicker based on the sport itself and where the medical staff feels the athletes are per sport. Those things are being worked out as we speak and will be put in place once the quarantine is lifted.”

U-M’s situation is unique not just to the Big Ten schools but those around the country, Manuel noted, given how the state has handled the COVID crisis. Seven of their teams would have been finished with their seasons, but now 28 or 29 sports are going on simultaneously. That puts a strain on the resources, including cleaning facilities, etc.

Testing, meanwhile, has been diligent, more so for the high-contact sports.

“A sport like football, hockey, basketball that are high contact, we’ve been testing them during their weeks of competition six times a week with antigen testing, following up with PCR, as necessary,” Manuel said. “For a sport like golf, they’re getting tested less because there’s less contact. There’s no physical contact on the golf course … tennis would be a another one. They can distance. So, it’s anywhere from three to six days a week depending on schedule and necessary for their sports.”

The goal, of course, is to keep them safe, which they’ve done extremely well since the pandemic began. Manuel is hopeful it will lead to a return to competition on the allotted Feb. 7 date with no concerns.

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