How will the day-to-day change with Wichita State basketball teams fully vaccinated?
Every player on the Wichita State men’s basketball team will be fully vaccinated for this upcoming season, head coach Isaac Brown announced before the first official practice of the 2021-22 season earlier this week.
The Shockers are well aware in how COVID-19 and protocols can interrupt a season. Just last season, WSU had to cancel 10 games, notably seven conference games because opponents were unable to play.
While having a 100% vaccination rate on the team doesn’t guarantee WSU won’t face a stoppage at some point this season, it does greatly increase the chances of avoiding a shutdown and a potential forfeit.
“I’m super excited that these guys went out and got vaccinated,” Brown said. “Because now you get losses, you don’t just cancel the game anymore when your team is not ready to go.”
Vaccination has been a polarizing topic recently in the NBA, but Brown said his players were unified in their decision.
“We met with the guys and told them that it was their decision, but we also let them know if you’re not vaccinated and you get (deemed) a close contact, then you would have to miss a game and that could cost us down the line,” Brown said. “All of those guys wanted to do it and they all went out and got vaccinated.”
So what difference will it make for the Shockers to have a fully-vaccinated team opposed to having one or two players who are unvaccinated?
To the players, the biggest benefit of being vaccinated is not having to undergo regular COVID testing. While unvaccinated players are still subject to weekly testing, vaccinated players no longer need to test if they are not showing symptoms.
Less time worrying about testing and more time focused on the game is something all players are looking forward to this season.
“There’s definitely not as many distractions as last year,” WSU junior Dexter Dennis said. “We had a lot going on last year with the coaching change and COVID. This year, man, we’re in a good state of mind right now and everything is solid for us. We’re just working, man. Every day, we’re just working on us.”
Another difference is the protocol for contact tracing. Unvaccinated players deemed a close contact have to quarantine for a “determined amount of time,” according to a WSU health official, and produce a negative test at the end of their quarantine. Meanwhile, a vaccinated player deemed a close contact is not required to quarantine and is instead encouraged to wear a mask until WSU performs a COVID test on them three-to-five days following their last close contact with the known positive.
Avoiding constant testing is a big deal to the WSU women’s team, which was ravaged last season by COVID-19 protocol. The Shockers had to cancel multiple games because they had so many players out and played a handful of others significantly short-handed, sometimes with as few as seven players.
“I was a professional spitter last year because we spit three times a week and that was over 100 times for the year, as well as our players,” said WSU women’s basketball coach Keitha Adams, who said her team will be in great shape in terms of vaccinations by the start of the season. “Think about that: three times a week going and getting a COVID test every week for a long season. By being vaccinated, I’m not having to do that any longer. That’s nice. I don’t miss that, nor do our players.”
Because the WSU men’s team is fully vaccinated, it won’t have to worry about special accommodations for road trips. Per WSU’s protocol, coaches are encouraged to avoid sitting their unvaccinated players next to each other and also not to room unvaccinated players together in hotel rooms.
But being fully vaccinated doesn’t mean travel is back to normal. WSU is still encouraging its teams to wear masks and socially distance whenever possible when traveling.
As much as coaches and players want the coronavirus pandemic to be behind them, Adams said there’s daily reminders that it is still very much present.
“You think you’re back to normal and it’s gone, yet there’s little things that happen and someone has to be out for contact tracing or someone gets it. That’s still happening,” Adams said on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, it’s still here. So we have to be smart about it. That’s why we’re wearing masks in practices as coaches and we’re doing little things like that because it’s not gone.
“But it is better. Things are better. The vaccine makes things better.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
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