But with college basketball caught in the full court press of a pandemic, the Raiders’ big man on campus has to be Franklin.
He is WSU’s longtime athletic trainer and now the in-house COVID expert.
Yet, when he heard himself referred to as such, it made him laugh…wearily.
“I will say I’ve never gone through anything like this,” he admitted. “I don’t think anyone has.”
He’s the guy charged with implementing the ever-changing guidelines set by the CDC, along with those of the NCAA and the local health department. And then there are the different requirements WSU teams must meet when they face other schools, in other conferences, often in different states.
“We played Marshall last night and they had different rules we had to follow to play them,” he said. “Our women are going to Michigan this weekend and they have different rules. They test six times a week.”
And the differences don’t always come from that far away. “UD is what, 10 miles away?” he said. “But they’re in Montgomery County and we’re in Greene so the requirements would be different.”
Interpreting the rules is one thing, but putting them into practice is another…especially when you’re still doing the regular training work dealing with the pains and sprains and more serious injuries while also helping athletes rehab from surgeries past.
When it comes to the coronavirus, players not only have thrice-weekly testing, but they must get their temperatures taken each day and fill out contact-related questionnaires. Then there’s the nonstop cleaning and sanitizing of locker rooms, training rooms, sideline chairs, practice basketballs, everything someone touches.
There’s also making sure people wear masks and social distance when possible and there’s the nonstop questions that arise each day:
Who are you rooming with on the road?
How do we keep everybody far enough apart on the bus?
How many people can go in the training room or the locker room at once?
Meanwhile, Franklin, like the coaches, has a family life, too, and he doesn’t want to bring the virus home with him. Wife Angie was a former WSU soccer player and the couple has two daughters, Sydney and Avery.
Sydney plays basketball for Carroll High School, which, like Wright State, has had games cancelled already this season and had last season cut short when the virus first laid siege in in early March.
Early impact
The WSU men’s basketball team was one of the first area teams really impacted by COVID-19.
The Raiders were upset in their first game of the Horizon League Tournament, a semifinal matchup against IUPUI in Indianapolis on March 9. Afterward the league notified WSU that one or two of the officials who refereed the game had tested positive for the coronavirus.
That put the entire WSU team into a 14-day quarantine.
During that time the NCAA Tournament and the NIT – where WSU would have played – both were cancelled .
As the pandemic worsened, Wright State closed its campus and sent students home.
Players returned to school in late summer and in the months that followed, individual workouts gave way to team practices. WSU, like every other college team, had to figure out a new and safe way to operate.
It wasn’t easy.
In mid-September the National Athletic Trainers Association (NATA) conducted a national survey, collecting input from 1,232 athletic trainers at Division I, II, III, NAIA and the junior college level.
It concluded just 34.8 percent of student-athletes and 46.8 percent of college coaches were fully following COVID-19 safety protocols.
Franklin said the WSU coaches and players have done a good job following guidelines and safety practices.
And yet it still hasn’t always been enough.
WSU personnel have said seven of the 12 players on the men’s team had the virus in the preseason, as did eight of the women’s players. Along with that, everyone has ended up in quarantine, sometimes more than once,
“They’re all young and while some have gotten symptoms no one has gotten too sick yet,” Franklin said. “That’s the normal thing for people this age.”
And while that’s good, in another aspect it’s not.
“Sometimes people just look at it as a big cold and it’s not,” Franklin said. “It’s serious.”
Because of that, WSU men rarely practice as a complete unit now and instead divide the squad for drills just to be on the safe side. That way if a person does test positive and the players around him must be quarantined, the entre team is not shut down.
COVID cancellations
WSU already had its first three games cancelled this season – a Thanksgiving round robin in Champaign, Illinois that would have seen the Raiders face Ohio University, Illinois and North Carolina A&T – because it had only six players available for the trip.
The WSU women cancelled their home opener versus Toledo for the same reason and had a Nov. 29 game at Butler cancelled when the Bulldogs program was victimized by the virus
The Raiders finally opened their season Thursday night at the Nutter Center against Marshall.
Although the Raiders led by 13 points in the first half, they faded after halftime, gave up 51 points in the final 20 minutes and lost, 80-64.
Afterward, when someone brought up that his team looked gassed at the end of the game, which likely had to do with the COVID interruptions, Nagy stopped that line of thought immediately:
“We’re not going to go with that. We’re just not! Our guys know what to do and we’re not going to use that as an excuse at all.
“There are some realities to it, but so what? I just feel when it got tough, we didn’t get tough.”
He said no leader emerged when the Raiders most needed one.
While that may have been the case in the game, it certainly is not off the court.
Franklin – with the help of his staff – is a real go-to man these days and the Raiders appear to be following his lead.
And if not, he doesn’t hesitate to remind them: “Hey, don’t just carry your mask, put it on.”
“For the most part everyone has embraced that so it’s gotten a lot easier,” he said before adding in quiet aside: “Fortunately or unfortunately.”
That means while people understand the seriousness, it also underscores that things remain serious.
And while the infection rates and death toll are soaring nationally, he said there is a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel” “A vaccine seems to be coming.”
In the meantime, he’ll keep taking the daily temperatures of players, while cleaning and sanitizing everything they touch and, on occasion, telling them to mask up.
And as the Raiders ready to meet Miami this afternoon at the Nutter Center, he might also suggest they improve their free throw shooting and their rebounding from Thursday night.
“Hey, in the grand scheme of things, I’m just glad we’re able to play sports,” he said “I’m glad our university is letting us do that. We’re just happy to get the chance to play.”
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