Anna Bauer ’23
Sports Editor
This past week, Trinity’s athletes were sent an email by Head Strength and Conditioning Coach Bill DeLongis detailing the weight room rules and how to sign up for training sessions. What was supposed to be a rather straight-forward process had a few glitches.
To give background, athletes are offered three different workouts from Monday to Thursday under the College’s COVID-19 protocols: (1) Wildcard Workout on GLAX/Field Hockey field, (2) Lift in Ferris, and (3) EDT Circuit in Tent 1. The hope is that students will be able to complete 2 to 3 of the workouts, and there are bonus workouts available for those wanting more.
In a world free of COVID-19, the lifting sign-up process would have been done, and has been done in the past, a little differently. Fall teams would have signed up for their sessions in person during their pre-season camp (which did not happen this year), and the winter and spring teams would typically have a mix of both small group lifts and team lifts. Small group lift sign-ups would have happened at team meetings, and team lifts did not require any signups because the sessions were done at times of the day when no classes were occurring. However, given the adjusted class schedule and the new capacity limit in the weight room, alterations to lift and how to sign up for lift needed to be made. Accordingly, the athletic department decided to use services provided by Sign-up.com.
While there were a few complications with the sign-up process, the website was not the source of them, so it will be used again. DeLongis explained that the first issue with the process was that “some students didn’t follow the instructions” and signed up “for only certain weeks or different times each week.” This was easily fixed by communicating to the athletes that their week one times were the same for all five weeks. The second issue was that the email sent out was supposed to be automatically sent at 8 p.m. via ARMS to each team. However, the program had a glitch and sent the emails out at various times, resulting in certain teams getting the signup sheet before others. However, there are 360 workout slots available each day for athletes to choose from and, at the moment, only seven out of the 25 workouts have reached capacity. So, while the more popular times may already be filled, athletes can still log on to the website and review an array of options.
DeLongis proudly detailed his opinions on last week’s minor complications stating, “the process wasn’t as smooth as we had envisioned but what a great problem to have and to fix. – We have in person learning, we have athletes who want to train and get better, and I continue to have the best job in the country.” Clearly a Bantam until the end, DeLongis is confident about the direction the fall 2020 athletic season is headed and hopes that a slow progression to what practices and activities usually look like can be made by mid-to-late October. However, as one might assume, this is entirely dependent on virus levels staying manageable not just on Trinity’s campus, but within the surrounding community and Connecticut as a whole. So, to all the athletes, keep the faith and hopefully we will see you in games soon.
+ There are no comments
Add yours