Carol George is Har­din Memorial Hospital’s Supervisor of Sports Medicine and has been the athletic trainer at Elizabethtown High School for the last five years. Compared to the previous four years, it’s safe to say her responsibilities with the school have looked pretty different in 2020.

Her planning for how to proceed began before any teams, high-touch or low-touch, returned to their activities.

“(Elizabethtown Athletic Director) Glenn Spalding and I met in early June, just to talk about what it this gonna look like,” George said. “The guidelines they put out, how do we even begin to plan for such an atypical preseason?”

George and other Hardin Memorial athletic trainers had gotten experience working at the hospital in the months leading up to the return to team activities. This aided George and her fellow trainers in an understanding of the screening process and what to watch for in terms of symptoms.

It also aided in how to set up a plan once the Kentucky High School Athletic Association laid out its plan for the June return to team activities.

“A lot of it is just taking the guidelines from the KHSAA and implementing them. What does it look like if someone screens positive? What does a practice look like,” George said. “We want to be there so coaches can coach. So coaches can be with the team and take the focus not off the health of the athletes, but let us take that load off of them. So whereas before it’s obviously the health and safety of the athlete and this is just adding another dimension to it.”

This added dimension comes in the form of things like temperature checks, asking athletes if they have had any symptoms prior to team activities and helping athletes keep the KHSAA guidelines in mind during practice and workouts.

Over at LaRue County High School, athletic trainer Sam Styer has been working to make sure these protocols are set up and followed correctly. Styer is heading into her fourth year with HMH and LaRue County since graduating from Eastern Kentucky in 2017.

Along with athletic trainers across the state and country, this summer her setup at practices has been altered.

“Essentially what we’ll do is we’ll arrive and we will get our prep stations set up, so that is making sure we’ve got hand sanitizer, making sure we’ve got our forehead thermometers, our touchless thermometers. Every school has implemented their system a little bit differently,” Styer said. “At LaRue, our system is a kid pulls up to practice. We will come up to the car, ask the child how are you feeling today, are you feeling sick at all, are you experiencing any symptoms? They will answer no, we will take their temperature, make sure it is under 100.0. As long as they’re not listing any symptoms on their symptoms screening and we take their temperature and everything is that, they’re cleared to enter practice at that time.”

During practice, Styer’s work to ensure conditions meet KHSAA guidelines continues.

“So they go through practice, again it is making sure that if more than two people are touching a ball, it’s being sanitized. Making sure that if we’ve got kids going in for weightlifting, they’re washing their hands in between, they’re wearing their masks when they’re moving between sites, they’re wearing their masks as they enter and exit practice,” she said. “The only time they don’t have their mask on is when they’re just participating in drills at practice.”

Helping enforce these rules at practice is an important aspect of making sure fall sports can move into full practice and competition over the next few weeks of August and September.

Styer still recognizes it isn’t easy on the athletes to be in this type of situation at their age.

“It’s not always fun, you hate to tell a kid not to be a kid. Don’t high-five each other, don’t hug each other. They miss each other,” Styer said. “They want to be kids and play around, but most of them understand it’s what we have to do to be here and that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Like most areas, these rules took some getting used to in places like Elizabethtown when they were first put in place. George explained that after a little while, the athletes became more used to what they had to do.

“Once you adjust to that first week or two, it’s like okay, this is what it is. Everyone knows the expectations. It has kind of settled in that this is the new normal,” George said. “It’s just kind of adjusted and everybody’s just been really happy to be back.”

These added responsibilities trainers face have been piled on top of what they already have on their plates.

In addition to COVID-19 screening and helping ensure guidelines are followed, there is still plenty of non COVID-19-related work to be done. Just because there’s a pandemic going on doesn’t mean keeping an eye out for heat exhaustion, taping up ankles and reminding athletes stay hydrated and nourished isn’t still part of the job.

“There’s a lot of juggling. I think any coach and especially Coach Spalding will tell you that we are in constant communication,” George said. “Any time coaches have questions, obviously they call me just throughout the day if maybe it is a sport where I’m not present. We have multiple sports going on at the same time. Just staying in communication if someone comes and they have a question.”

There wasn’t much prior experience to base these guidelines and protocols on before they were put in place ahead of the June return to team activities.

Still, both George and Styer have been pleased with how high school athletics have proceeded since getting back together. Styer thought the approach of not getting back into full practice too quickly was the right decision.

“I would much rather be in a position where with the KHSAA, what they’ve done, they’ve taken us in low and slow. They’ll gradually return us to play as long as everything keeps continuing at a good pace with us going low and slow,” Styer said. “If they would’ve just let us go on June 13, everyone’s free to go full practice and just let us know if anything happens, it would’ve been chaos and I think we’ve done really well so far.”

George added that although they’ve headed into the unknown with summer practices amid a pandemic, she’s been impressed by how everyone has been able to adapt to this challenge.

“Each situation is a new situation. You feel like guinea pigs going through this, but so has everyone. I think that the hospitals would tell you the same thing. There was so much unknown out there, I feel like everybody has felt like a guinea pig of how are we making this work. But we’re seeing nine weeks into it and we’ve had a successful and safe nine weeks. You figure out how to address things as they come up,” she said. “I think everyone has settled in, lots of communication with parents and athletes. But we’re feeling good about things.

“We’re feeling that people are coming on campus and staying safe in their activity. We’re in communication with the (Lincoln Trail) Health Department. So you get through the uncertainty and ‘what are we doing’ and ‘this doesn’t feel right’ and ‘this isn’t a normal preseason’ and you adjust and see that things are okay.”