Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1349632
and he's progressed in the year that he's
been here, as a football IQ guy, as a
blocker, as a route runner. So I'm really,
really excited about him."
–David Eckert
4
How will the Lions' COVID
precautions a5ect their o5-
season drills?
With any luck, this won't be as big a
problem as it was last fall. During the
2020 season, the Nittany Lions' prac-
tices were hampered by a series of false-
positive results arising from the team's
daily antigen testing regimen. Since
then, however, Penn State has taken that
testing equipment off-line. Athletic di-
rector Sandy Barbour said in January
that the five analyzers in the Lasch
Building were sent back to the manufac-
turer. If they've been replaced by more-
reliable equipment, Penn State will have
solved one of the more vexing problems
that dogged it during the regular season.
But the underlying problem – the con-
tinuing threat of COVID – hasn't gone
away. Like most of the country, Penn
State's athletic community saw a spike
in cases after the holidays. According to
the testing results that PSU has made
public on a weekly basis, the two worst
weeks of the pandemic were Jan. 16-22,
when 37 of the 1,994 tests the athletic
department conducted came back posi-
tive, and Jan. 23-29, when 33 of 2,208
tests were positive.
Since then, however, the numbers have
been trending down, with a total of 37
positive tests between Jan. 30 and Feb.
27. That works out to an average of 9.3
positive tests per week in February, a
substantial decline from the previous
month when the average was 23.5 per
week. Penn State doesn't release its re-
sults on a team-by-team basis, so we
don't know how many positive cases the
football team has had, if any. We do
know that the women's volleyball,
wrestling and men's ice hockey teams
have had to pause activities in the past
few months due to positive tests.
Even if the football team is able to stay
largely COVID-free, as it did last fall
when it was one of only two Big Ten
teams that were able to play all nine of
their scheduled games, it could face some
unique challenges this spring. One of
those challenges has to do with the
scheduling of facilities. As of this writing,
there were 28 Penn State varsity teams in
action. In addition to the winter sports
teams that are always finishing up their
seasons this time of year and the spring
teams that are always starting up in Feb-
ruary and March, PSU has resumed com-
NUMBERS GAME: These stats must improve for PSU to rebound
W
ith last season's disappointing 4-5