Western Kentucky began reintroducing athletes to its campus Monday, when 65 members of the football team were expected to return for workouts before the remainder of the team comes back July 6, the same day the university plans to bring back its volleyball and women’s soccer teams, according to the COVID-19 restart plan the school introduced May 28.

Mike Gaddie, WKU’s associate athletic director for sports medicine and athletic training, discussed the plan to bring student-athletes back to campus on the 13th episode of WKU’s “Beyond The Hill” podcast, which was released Monday.

“It takes a lot of individuals and you have to surround yourself with those great people that professionally you respect and trust and know that they’re going to do everything they possibly can to make this process work,” Gaddie said on the podcast. “ … One thing that’s most important in this entire time is it’s a living document, so we made changes daily and we updated them and we learned and we progressed through that process.”

Gaddie said it involved “ever-learning daily, probably even sometimes hourly” during the process of putting the restart plan together as he and his team – he spoke about working with associate athletic director for facilities and administration Craig Biggs and associate athletic director for communications and media relations Zach Greenwell – gathered information from a variety of sources, including nationally with guidelines put together by the Centers for Disease Control, regionally with statewide guidance and locally with team physicians and his staff.

“Craig, Zach and I sat around and I’d say to those guys, ‘Guys, we need to be as close to perfect as we can. We need to make sure we are not getting in a hurry, that we are paying attention to the details even more than we normally do,’ and in athletics, man, we all pay attention to details because the details are really about successes or failures,” Gaddie said.

Gaddie said he and his team also worked with other schools and was part of a weekly “think tank” Zoom meeting with athletic training professionals from major universities.

“We’ve talked to a lot of different people, we have followed the guidelines, we have made sure we continuously made sure we stay on top of what’s coming out and then our health care physicians, both here locally and then our outside resources, we contact them multiple times a day,” Gaddie said.

Gaddie said he created four informational documents to try to increase education about the coronavirus and to prepare athletes, coaches and staff for the return to campus. Those documents included information on how those returning could protect themselves before they arrive, what the facilities will look like, how to protect themselves once they’ve returned and information for parents and guardians.

“We just felt like the more I can put in front of them, it’s going to hopefully hit home and hopefully they’ll buy into all of that,” he said.

WKU’s football coaches returned to the facilities last week and workouts are planned for groups of 10 or fewer people. The athletic department will only perform COVID-19 testing for those who display symptoms of the virus. Asymptomatic people will not be automatically tested, although resources will be provided for testing for any student-athlete who requests it.

“From a logistical standpoint, (football is) obviously the biggest one in terms of size of the roster and coaching staff.” WKU athletics director Todd Stewart said May 28 when the plan was proposed. “… What we really wanted to do is get the team fall sports here first, get them into a routine, get them around their teammates and their coaches again and after that, we have a gradual phase throughout the month of July when we’ll bring everybody else in.”

WKU football is scheduled to open its season Sept. 5 at Houchens-Smith Stadium against UT-Chattanooga.

On the podcast, Gaddie stressed the importance of being cautious and smart in the restart plan, which is part of the reason for a small number of athletes returning Monday and staggering restart dates for other athletic programs, as well as the importance of flexibility in plans due to the ever-changing information available on the coronavirus.

“The guys that I work with daily on trying to put this plan in place, we right off the bat realized we had to leave room and have basically an opportunity each day to relook at the majority of the plan,” Gaddie said. “I can’t tell you how many drafts that were changed multiple times a day based on the information, but we have to be willing to change and we have to be open minded, and we know we don’t have perfect answers and we know we don’t have the scenarios that are going to play out.

“There’s not going to be a way that we’re going to say, ‘This is the only way and this is the way it has to be,’ because if we do that, then we’re probably going to set ourselves up to get ourselves in a position to where we have to relook at something pretty quickly. We need to make sure we’re being smart.”

WKU athletics’ COVID-19 restart plan is one of four student return proposals by the university presented to the public on May 28 to prepare phasing students for a return after the coronavirus pandemic moved all courses online in March. With that came the cancellation of all athletic-related functions. C-USA canceled what remained of its basketball tournaments March 12, and later canceled the remainder of spring sports seasons.

The men’s and women’s basketball teams will be brought back to campus on July 9 and begin voluntary workouts July 13. Cheerleading, men’s and women’s golf, cross country, track and field, softball, baseball and tennis teams will return to campus in phases until Aug. 22.{&end}{&end}