The immense changes and construction on the Notre Dame campus in the last decade have been unprecedented, and included a $30 million renovation just over seven years ago at the Morris Inn. It is the on-campus hotel where the Fighting Irish football team began to be housed this week and until classes for the fall semester begin Aug. 10.
Located along the entry into the campus on Notre Dame Avenue, it is a AAA 4 Diamond Rated property, which places it among the top five percent of all hotels in the United States.
For head coach Brian Kelly and the football program, though, it’s not about the luxuries with the hotel, but the necessities and experience it dealt with earlier this spring.
“I want to emphasize being in the Morris Inn and selecting the Morris Inn is because they have a lot of experience dealing with students that were there during the height of the COVID pandemic,” Kelly said in a Zoom meeting with the media earlier this week.
“They are well versed in understanding the virus and all the CDC [Center for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines that go with it in terms of distancing, sanitizing, meals, meal preparation.”
The latter is vital while the players acclimate to developing a structure academically, with workouts and beyond.
“Right now most of our meals will be pick-up-and-go meals,” Kelly said. “We’re in discussion about having tables that would be six feet apart and the potential for one meal where we would have less than five at a table, 20 in a room at a time, six feet apart, served by servers that have masks. That would be one meal a day.”
Each player will be housed in a single room, and how workouts will be scheduled will be contingent by the academic schedules they have when summer school commences next week.
While under quarantine from next Monday through Friday (June 15-19), both the football players and employees will be tested for COVID-19 and antibodies for it. “Voluntary” workouts are slated to begin the following Monday (June 22).
Before they are permitted to enter any athletic facility for their scheduled workout, players must fill out symptom survey and have their temperatures taken every day.
The three-phase plan for workouts, primarily weight training and running, will begin with working in groups of 10 or less (again based on academic schedules). All indoor training mandates players and staff members to wear masks.
When they will enter into phase two — which would be working out in groups of 50 or less, while phase three would be an unlimited number — will be left to the judgment of head football team physician Dr. Matt Leiszler M.D., and head athletic trainer for football Rob Hunt. Leiszler has been with the program since 2017 and Hunt since 2011.
Anyone who tests positive will receive treatment in an isolated facility.
“They will have to stay on campus during this period of time, and their interaction is limited to our strength staff,” Kelly said. “If a coach is [in] contact with them, they have to have a mask on, and that is set up strictly by the procedures through Doctor Leiszler and Rob Hunt.
“We will have quarantine workouts that we will not supervise but were given instruction as to what they’re allowed to do. Those will take place at another site and those will be band workouts — rubber band workouts. … We’ve come up with workouts you can do on your own.”
To avoid travel, Notre Dame reportedly also will not begin training camp this August at Culver Academies as it has most of the past decade.
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