FREMONT, Nebraska (AP) – The temperature was approaching 90 degrees and a gentle breeze was blowing when Jeff Jamrog put his Midland University football team to the test in the midday sun.
From the street beyond Heedum Field, it seemed like a typical August practice. A liner organization hit a locking sled, there was a skeletal pass training and a scrum without tackle.
Signs of normality disappear at the front of the field. Visitors are controlled by fever. A hand sanitizer dispenser hangs from a wooden pole a few steps from the door. Everyone, unless you participate in an exercise, must wear a mask.
“It’s boring, ” said the supporter Theo Blum, hiding. “After the first 3 or 4 days, at most, other people got used to it. That’s what it is. We’re dressed with him. Maybe we’re getting some sun out of our face and getting excellent tan lines. what we have to do to play.”
While most school football groups in the country will not play this fall because of the coronavirus pandemic, Midland is one of five Nebraska groups advancing. They don’t come with the Nebraska Cornhuskers, who will be inactive after the Big Ten to postpone the season in the spring.
Enthusiasts of the disappointed Huskers will not be comfortable with the fact that Memorial Stadium will be surrounded by groups, though all small schools, looking to continue as usual. Of the 52 National Inter-University Athletics Association schools that plan to play, 35 are in Nebraska and neighboring states of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and South Dakota.
Jamrog and Midland’s sporting director Dave Gillespie have spent nearly two decades with the Huskers as players, coaches and administrators. Both said they felt very bad that their alma mater does not bet this fall and that they perceive the outrage caused by the Big Ten resolution in this state of 1.8 million.
The Midland League, the Great Plains Athletic Conference, announced on July 21 that it would attempt a football season starting September 12. The NAIA allows the team to play nine games, two less than usual, but the playoffs will not be played until spring. .
Gillespie stated that Midland followed GPAC protocols and local fitness branch rules to mitigate the COVID-19 threat.
“There doesn’t seem to be any national consensus on what’s right (when it comes to the game), and you can get a lot of other criticism about that,” Gillespie said. “It’s not completely safe and we’ll never make it completely safe. We try to make it as safe as possible and be careful wherever we want and can.”
Midland football players will have to wear a mask inside. Outdoors, they deserve to distance themselves as much as they can imagine when they’re not exercising and use a hand sanitizer regularly.
Plexiglas barriers have been installed in the cafeteria and other sports facilities spaces. Players shower in their homes that in the locker room. There are temperature controls and questions about varieties every day. Lunches are ready to go. For food in the cafeteria, players sit 6 feet away.
The challenge of keeping the bubble close increases with the start of the school year on Thursday. Midland will organize face-to-face and online courses.
Gillespie said coronavirus tests were performed if an athlete had symptoms. He said there had been a “handful” of positive tests between more than two hundred fall athletes. Jamrog stated that a football player had retired due to COVID-19-like disorders.
Blum said he and his teammates were grateful to have an fall season to look forward, even if he had minor drawbacks. Only 145 of the 765 NAIA and 3 NCAA divisions are expected to play at least one game this fall (19%). Another 57 high schools changed their seasons in the spring.
“I know there are thousands of people all over the country who can’t play,” he said. “It’s a motto for us this year at first: each and every day is a blessing to play.”
The Warriors start the season with momentum. They have won six in a row at the end of 2019 and decided third in the GPAC.
“If we closed, ” said Blum, “everyone would have broken their hearts.
Jamrog, who enters his fifth year in Midland, said he would love football-hungry Husker enthusiasts to open his Warriors as their 2020 team when they start 50 miles from Memorial Stadium. More than a hundred of its 150 players are from Nebraska. And in a jokeless comment, he invited ESPN College GameDay to Fremont.
Heedum Field will be limited to 75% of its capacity. Midland has attracted about 1,200 enthusiasts according to the 5,000-seat stadium game in 2019, meaning there will be plenty of room.
“Hello, Nebraska fans, they supported us,” Austin Harris said. “We’re going to play ball this fall.”
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