South Carolina women’s basketball players will not return to campus as soon as soccer players in early June, but the head coach is expected to Dawn Staley will have its players on the basketball facilities sometime during the summer.
As a guest at SportsCenter from Friday at noon, Staley admitted that the players ‘parents expressed concern about their daughters’ return to campus.
“I spoke to a father who is going to send his daughter back, but he is going to send his daughter back flying in first class,” said Staley. “It is probably an astronomical value to buy a plane ticket, but it is failing on the safety side. If any of our parents have any concerns and don’t want to send their daughters back, I say, ‘Stay home.’ We will not take the bag from them. We will err on the side of caution and harm them ”.
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As far as the players are concerned, Staley says there is enthusiasm for them and for her to get the team back together, but there is a focus on making it as safe as possible.
“This is a scary process, but they want to get back to normal,” said Staley. “I want them back, I hope they follow the protocol, which will be difficult for them because they will not be able to go out and do the normal things that a university student does.
“They will have to be quarantined from the moment they step on campus until the moment they are tested until the moment we receive the results. Still, we want them to be quarantined because we don’t know who they’re going to interact with and whether they’re going to take it back to their teammates. “
Staley said his lineup is likely to be split into groups of four, and he hopes the process will begin before the rest of the student body returns to campus in August.
“I hope we can find a way to get everyone to a point where they are negative and just make progress from that point,” said Staley. “We need to start somewhere. Hopefully, it may be some time before other students arrive on campus, so that we can air everything that will or will not happen. We want to be prepared if and when we play our college basketball season.”
Staley just finished his 12th season as head of the Gamecocks women’s basketball program. South Carolina ended the season as the number one team with the longest time in the country, holding first place for nine weeks. She has a record of 305-98 in South Carolina.