AUBURN, Wing. – Auburn’s pre-season program stopped the week.
The Tigers have not practiced since Tuesday after the team launched nine positive COVID-19 tests and had to quarantine seven others, Coach Gus Malzahn said Sunday. A total of 16 players are lately marginalized.
“We had a fair week last week,” he said.
Malzahn refused to give details about who tested positive or the positions they played in, but said two teams of positions had taken enough hits that we “didn’t feel we had enough guys to train” on Wednesday. The team also did not endure scheduled training on Thursday or Saturday, with 3 missing in total.
Social injustice issues at the national level also played a role: Malzahn said players were “extremely upset” by the occasions in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Jacob Blake, 29, black shot seven times through the police and 17 times.shot and killed two protesters, and that “our coaches and staff felt the same.”
The players did not need to attend Thursday’s meetings, which Malzahn said he fully supported.The team met on Friday and Malzahn then took the resolution that Auburn would not perform an internal scrum scheduled at Jordan-Hare Stadium on Saturday.
“I just made the decision that it wasn’t better for us to train,” the coach said. “My greatest fear is the intellectual and physical well-being of our players. I felt like we needed the weekend. I think it was a smart decision.”
Auburn plans to return to education this week after Monday’s day off.It will be in the box on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays before playing on Saturday.Thursday is reserved for COVID-19 testing, which the program now plans to do twice a week before the 3 SEC-ordered TESTS begin two weeks before the Tigers’ inaugural game on September 26 against Kentucky.Malzahn believes the team still has time to prepare for this game, but now there is more urgency.
This is especially true when you consider that those 16 players will be absent this week and beyond.The nine who tested positive, Malzahn stated that Auburn uses the “benchmark test,” will have to go through a mandatory 10-day quarantine (according to SEC rules) and then a seven-day readmission era (according to rules set through Auburn’s medical staff).The other seven will be quarantined for 14 days and will not be able to leave.
Tigers have enough players to exercise without them (there are 122 in total on the list), but they will have to adapt to make some position teams thinner than others. If it was a week of games, Malzahn said, the team just “found a way to play with what you have.”
Fortunately, “very few” of players who tested positive for COVID-19 had primary symptoms, Malzahn said, others with minor symptoms or no symptoms. But the program takes each and every scenario very seriously.
“The downside is that the physical condition and protection of our players comes first,” Malzahn said. “When you go through it, there is a competitive side, however, we will prioritize our team; the intellectual and physical aptitude of our players. Yes, we sense it’s four weeks away. We feel like we have time to prepare. But like I said, we’ll take it day after day and do our best.
Auburn had in the past undergone two consecutive rounds of testing (August 9 and August 16) without any new cases. Malzahn said there was “no bachelor event” that caused an increase this week, but said the fact that the rest of the university’s student structure returned to campus to begin the fall semester on August 17 may have been a factor.
The Auburn University Medical Clinic reported 202 new cases among academics from 901 tests conducted from August 14 to 21.
“You bring the students back to campus, you know, if you’re off campus, you have a roommate, you have to wear your mask, you have to stay on the other side of the house,” Malzahn said. “It’s just a process learning. I think our guys are going to do everything they can to stay healthy and keep our team healthy.”
As for the fight against social injustice, Malzahn said, Auburn has “a couple of things we’re going to do as a team to move forward,” “always paint on them.”
This week’s goal, in terms, is to “train.”