Fuente discusses positive Covid-19 tests ahead of season opener

Chris Hirons

September 2, 2020

BLACKSBURG — In a normal year, Virginia Tech would be preparing for its season opening game this upcoming weekend against Liberty.

However, as we all know, this isn’t a normal year.

The coronavirus struck in March and sent college sports —and the rest of the country— into a frenzy. The NCAA and its respective conferences had over five months to reschedule games, acquire testing supplies, prepare safety protocols and adjust to this season’s new popular scheduling tactic: conference-only games.

Nevertheless, plans change, and boy, can plans change quickly. The Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences called off their season’s in early August, even after both conferences announced that they would create a conference-only schedule just weeks before.

While coronavirus safety concerns led to the cancellation of the two aforementioned Power Five conferences, three of the remaining five chose to play this fall — the ACC, Big 12 and SEC. Still, the Big Ten has had conversations about starting play either in the late fall or early winter.

Installing safety measures to limit the spread of the deadly virus, which has been listed as a factor in the cause of death of more than 185,000 Americans, was just the start to ensuring a safe college football season is played.

Now, as students return to campus across the country, including Virginia Tech, the number of positive cases for students on-campus and in the athletic departments has risen.

Schools like North Carolina, NC State and Notre Dame have already sent their on-campus students home or switched to an online-only approach to help limit the number of positive cases that each campus already has.

Both the Tarheels and the Wolfpack are set to play the Hokies later this season. Notre Dame, an honorary entry into the ACC this season, is scheduled to play opponents that will play against Virginia Tech later this fall.

The Hokies game against NC State was originally scheduled for Sept. 12 was rescheduled last week to Sept. 26 due to an outbreak that occurred in the Wolfpack’s athletic department. It was announced on Monday that NC State’s football team had continued workouts after last week’s brief pause.

Virginia Tech has seen a slight, but expected, uptick in positive coronavirus cases since students were permitted to be back on campus. Since in-person classes resumed last week for the first time since March, Tech saw a large increase in cases, from 16 cases during move-in week to 157 cases, that were reported on Virginia Tech’s coronavirus dashboard on Monday.

On Wednesday morning, a day after Hokies head coach Justin Fuente surprised transfer running back Raheem Blackshear with news that Blackshear will be eligible to play this upcoming fall, Fuente told reporters that the football team’s cases of coronavirus are “in line” with the rest of the student body’s positive cases.

“We’re in the middle of it,” Fuente said. “We’re no different from the general population in terms of trying to handle it all. There are more people out in the streets; the line at Chipotle is longer.”

Fuente didn’t go into the specifics about who had tested positive for the virus, though, he did discuss that the coaching staff is cross-training players to play multiple positions in the case that players have to switch positions due to an outbreak in a position group.

“We’re trying to find versatile players,” Fuente said. “We’ve thought out ways to separate the quarterbacks. We’ve had meetings with the players to discuss their responsibilities.”

Though the football team has had a number of positive cases, there has yet to be an outbreak within a position group, which could be taken as a silver lining. Fuente also mentioned that most of the positive tests within the players on the football team have been asymptomatic, and explained that he hasn’t given any thought about whether some of the positive tests are false positives.

“I’ve been a basketcase with everything going on,” Fuente said. “We can only control what we can control. In my mind, it’s more about how we can get through today.”

After the ACC agreed to reschedule Virginia Tech’s game against NC State last week, Fuente said he has yet to hear who makes the call for rescheduling a game, the requisites for a player to play a game if the player had previously tested positive for the coronavirus or had close contact with someone else who had tested positive.

“It’d be nice to receive a briefing on how a game is rescheduled or how a player is held out of a game,” Fuente said. “At what point do we reach the point of it not being safe?”

On Tuesday, Tech announced that the school and the city had agreed to prohibit tailgating in university and town parking lots and public spaces for this season. The head coach said that it was “disappointing” but that he understood the reason why tailgating is being prohibited.

“To Tech fans, it’s more than a football game,” Fuente said. “I hate it for our fans, but at the same time, I understand the reasoning."