Virus Outbreak Forced Dukes' Pause

On Tuesday, JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne said there are 28 members of the team who are currently quarantined. Twelve have tested positive for COVID-19 and the other 16 are under protocol due to contact tracing.

The Dukes had to postpone this past Saturday’s home contest with William & Mary and this coming Saturday’s home date with Richmond because of the outbreak.

“It potentially may have originated coming through the dormitory system,” Bourne said. “And once it came out of the dorm, it came into the team. That’s where we weren’t able to control it as quickly.”

Bourne said the first football player tested positive for the virus on March 3 and was symptomatic.

Since then, the virus has spread through the team, according to Bourne, even with strong social-distancing measures and technology in place to try to prevent an outbreak like this. One portion of the roster uses the regular locker room inside the Athletic Performance Center and another part uses the visiting locker for social-distancing purposes. All players and coaches have worn Connex GPS trackers since the preseason to accurately record how long and how frequently they’ve been in contact with one another.

“But it’s not just that,” Bourne said. “Are they living together? What happens when they leave the athletic facilities and go back to their homes on or off-campus? Are they living with one another? Are they living with an individual who has tested positive or may have been quarantined at some point in time? Does it impact your bus travel?

“We had a very elaborate system for travel to Elon, which I thought was extremely well done. But even looking at that, now that we’re back home, I think we could’ve had one or two individuals pass it on during the transportation segment of the trip.”

Bourne said one change he’s making to JMU’s travel procedures is to give every member of the traveling party an antigen test for COVID-19 on the day of departure. Results for antigen tests usually take 10 to 15 minutes to show and those cost $5 per test, Bourne said.

JMU, as a school, reported 90 active cases among students and staff, with 10 new positives as of Monday, according to its COVID-19 online dashboard. Also according to the dashboard, 329 quarantine/isolation beds are available with 105 in use.

For now, JMU football will remain on pause and have no in-person team activity, but the longtime Dukes athletic director nor his program have changed aspirations for this unique spring campaign.

Bourne said he’s hoping the pause yields the same results NFL teams got when they paused to try to slow a spread of the virus in the fall. If it works, then Bourne believes players can start to work out in segmented, smaller groups as soon as the end of this week. And if all continues to trend properly, JMU can practice next week and possibly play its scheduled road game at William & Mary on March 27.

Bourne said he believes players still want to play and getting back to action could help their mental health. He said all players who tested positive for the virus are expected to make a full recovery from it.

JMU needs to play four games against FCS competition to be eligible for the postseason. The Dukes have already played three and are 3-0 with victories against Morehead State, Robert Morris and Elon. To be eligible for the Colonial Athletic Association’s automatic qualifying bid, they’ll need to play three conference games. The only one the Dukes have played to this point was their win at Elon.

“We are very much committed to finishing out this season,” Bourne said. “… I feel like those are very, very reachable numbers.”

Bourne said he hopes JMU can make up one of its postponed home contests against William & Mary or Richmond during the final week of the regular season when all schools in the CAA South Division have a bye week. He said his preference is for the Dukes to host William & Mary then. If neither the Tribe nor the Spiders are willing to play a makeup game, then he’ll look elsewhere to possibly add to the schedule for April 17.

“I have a hard time believing that JMU is going to be the only institution that’s going to run into a problem in the regular season with missing games,” Bourne said. “So we’re very much open-minded to looking at opponents if we had to from the [CAA North Division], and if something happened and one wasn’t available, I’m more than willing to consider opponents outside of the league. Of course, the big issue is making sure at this point that you do get to three [CAA] games, so you stand a shot at the AQ.”

The elephant in the room, though, is even that and a perfect record may not be enough to earn the automatic qualifier for the Dukes. If a team in the North finishes unblemished without missing any games, that team would have played one more conference contest than JMU – assuming the Dukes don’t have any additional postponements – and have the better record. Currently, Delaware is unbeaten through two league games and has topped its opponents 37-0 and 31-3.