The University of Toledo has paused all men’s basketball activities for the next two weeks due to a coronavirus outbreak on the team.
The program announced the move in a news release Wednesday after six players tested positive on Tuesday as part of regular weekly surveillance testing.
“Student-athlete health and safety is always our top priority and we are going to continue to follow the prevention protocols and ongoing testing procedures already in place,” athletic director Mike O’Brien said in the release. “The COVID-19 pandemic remains a serious challenge, and our primary focus will always be on ensuring our student-athletes’ health. We look forward to our men’s basketball program resuming its team activities.”
All of those who tested positive are isolating, and the university will be setting up quarantine accommodations — including food and laundry — for the players who are impacted. The school is also partnering with the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department to conduct contact tracing, and will be arranging for additional coronavirus testing for all close contacts.
On Monday, the program announced head coach Tod Kowalczyk tested positive after he began experiencing mild symptoms over the weekend. On Monday and Tuesday, the team did not practice following Kowalczyk’s positive test as they awaited the results of this latest round of surveillance testing.
“Coach made the decision to just pause knowing that we had our normal Tuesday test,” Brian Jones, the team’s athletic trainer and associate athletic director for sports medicine, told The Blade. “There was some uneasiness since this was our first [positive] test.
“We went through and said you began to experience symptoms late Friday night into Saturday, we go back 48 hours, who were you in contact with greater than 15 minutes, within 6 feet, without a mask? And we contact traced and nobody in our program he would have been around who met that criteria. So, from a medical aspect, I felt very comfortable moving forward with practice on Monday with our normal testing on Tuesday. There was just some uneasiness, and so coach made the decision to pause and I didn't have a disagreement with that. I understood why he did.”
Kowalczyk told The Blade the team had a virtual meeting Wednesday via Zoom and added most of the players who tested positive are asymptomatic and the rest have mild symptoms.
Overall, Kowalczyk said he feels the players have done a good job of adhering to the coronavirus protocols in place — which both he and Jones said goes to show how easily asymptomatic spread can happen.
“We haven't had any situations where they have been at large gatherings,” Kowalczyk said. “They've been adhering to most of the things that they have been taught and told. I think this is a perfect example, and according to our medical staff, probably how I got it is an asymptomatic player brought it into the program and they don't know that because they don't have any symptoms. That's the problem. That's the difficulty is the people that are asymptomatic don't know it but are spreading it. The easy ones are people like me that quickly get a fever and we know it and can self-isolate. But one player can be asymptomatic and spread it amongst his teammates.”
When it comes to return to play, Jones said the requirements for players could look different depending on if they develop symptoms.
After 10 days of isolation for those who tested positive and 14 days of quarantine for those who have been exposed, players must be free of symptoms for 24 hours before an evaluation will be done by team physicians. After that, they will go through at least a four-day reintroduction period ramping up to 100 percent activity, provided they are completely medically cleared.
According to CDC and NCAA guidelines, after players who tested positive make it through their 10-day isolation period and are symptom free, they do not have to go through surveillance testing for 90 days unless they begin to show symptoms again, as surveillance testing would be “unlikely to yield useful information” per those guidelines.
“If they would re-develop COVID symptoms that would change that 90-day window,” Jones said. “For me to tell you right now what it will look like on the back side, I can't really do that because each case is going to be different. If one person has no symptoms and another person has mild symptoms, those two cases will be handled differently. It's all going to be dependent on how symptomatic they become during the next 10 to 14 days. So, depending on whether or not you are positive and in isolation versus whether or not you were exposed and in a 14-day quarantine. Either one of those whenever they come back, obviously it will be a slow return which would occur over at least a four-day period.”
The program is set to resume practices Nov. 4, which means they would have three weeks of preparation before the first game. Toledo is set to open up its season at the Xavier Invitational on Nov. 25, but the full non-conference schedule has yet to be released.
While practices are shut down, Kowalczyk said he’s still planning ways to keep his team mentally engaged, especially when it comes to things like watching film and going over sets virtually. But overall, he added he feels even with this pause that the team has a decent amount of time for its preseason.
“We've had 19 practices already, that's a lot,” Kowalczyk said. “We have installed quite a bit of our offensive and defensive philosophy and schemes. I don't want this two-week pause to diminish those and start over. So, I want to do a lot of mental rehearsal and preparation and that involves both ends of the ball, and so we'll have some videos of our sets and some rehearsal on our defensive schemes and philosophy.
“We'll resume practices on Nov. 4. So, that still gives us three weeks before we play, which is plenty of time for us. Let's face it, teams are going to have this happen. The fact that we had this situation now versus in the middle of January when you're in the middle of games too, you have to look at the positive side, as well.”
First Published October 21, 2020, 4:28 p.m.
