Arizona's phased reentry plan is set to begin next week with 20 football players being the first student-athletes permitted to return to action on a voluntary basis. June 15 is the first day Pac-12 programs are going to be allowed to have voluntary workouts and at UA that will begin with the football team.
Two groups of 10 football players will begin their workouts on campus Monday followed by 30 more players, in groups of 10, the following week as college athletics work to return after an extended three-month layoff caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
States around the United States have already started relaxing many of the restrictions that have been in place for months, so the NCAA and conferences around the country have already started allowing players to begin returning to campus to prepare for the upcoming season.
The UA plan is to work in several phases that will allow all sports to eventually return to campus by August ahead of the tentative Aug. 24 start date for the fall semester in Tucson.
"We're obviously very optimistic and enthusiastic about bringing back some student-athletes in small numbers to measure how we can continue and what ways we'll continue with the process," Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke said during a Zoom call with local media on Thursday. "... It's a plan that has been worked on with administrative staff, our medical professionals on staff and in the community. ... It's been a monumental effort by a number of people to get us to this point."
Stage 1 will begin with groups of 10 or less athletes followed by Stage 2 that will increase that number to 50 athletes before reaching Stage 3 that will include competition and "mass gathering" size increases.
Maximizing safety and minimizing risk is at the forefront of the plan for Arizona and Heeke stressed Thursday that there will be an abundance of caution as the athletic department moves forward to bring athletes back to campus and begin summer workouts.
Because the situation surrounding the coronavirus is ongoing at this time, Arizona has made it clear that there could be changes to its reentry plan and most of what is currently in place is tentative based on the information UA athletics' reentry team has been able to gather so far.
"The number one goal is the health and safety of our student-athletes and staff," Dr. Stephen Paul of C.A.T.S. Medical Services said during Thursday's Zoom call. "The other big thing is that this is extremely fluid and flexible. So what you see today, depending on changes that happen and in consultation with the experts, it could change tomorrow because we're always able to move and be nimble."
Flexible and fluid are two words Heeke also used to describe the current reentry plan for Arizona. The goal for UA is to keep things as controlled as possible and that is why the athletic department is moving slowly through the process.
That will take a considerable amount of cooperation from the players themselves to prevent any potential setback to the reentry plan. Paul said players will be allowed to live off campus and conduct themselves like any other person in Tucson for the most part, but the plan is to keep the interaction among the players within their own pods of 10 players or less.
Doing so, Paul said, will help limit any potential spread of COVID-19 should any football player contract the virus once allowed to begin working out on campus.
Arizona plans on having its entire football team on campus by July when on-field preparations can begin for the upcoming season. July will bring the next wave of sports to campus starting with the fall sports with all other sports getting to Tucson for workouts by early August.
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