Is Sounders’ return to training a look at what Seahawks will do post-coronavirus lockdown?
Cristian Roldan wore a grin under his black face mask as he walked onto the training ground.
Xavier Arreaga flashed a peace sign then a thumbs up with his right hand under his face mask. Then the Ecuadorian defender pressed both palms together to display his thankfulness to be back on a field.
Nicolas Lodeiro worked up a sweat running through cones and driving hard, low shots into a small, wooden box. No one was within 30 yards of him.
The defending Major League Soccer-champion Seattle Sounders FC have returned to training, part of a sports world slowly, incrementally reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic.
And the Seahawks and entire NFL are watching. Very closely, to see if this is the way to incrementally return to training before playing.
This week Roldan, Arreaga, Lodeiro and more Sounders players have been wearing dark masks over their noses and mouths as they walk from their cars straight onto the training fields at the team’s Starfire Sports complex in Tukwila. Coaches wearing masks have stayed a long pass away from the players.
The daily, voluntary individual player workouts began Monday. They are the first activities of any kind for the Sounders at Starfire since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the MLS season March 12.
They are among the first organized team drills for any U.S. sport since the COVID-19 virus shut down most of society 2 1/2 months ago.
“This is a positive development for our players, and I know they are excited to get back to training on our fields—even if only individually at the moment,” Sounders coach Brian Schmetzer told the team’s pool reporter.
That’s the only media member allowed at the closed workouts.
“This has been a trying time for everyone at our club, as it has for our entire community,” Schmetzer said, “and we’ll take the opportunity to appreciate this small step forward tomorrow.”
All NFL team facilities remain closed to players and coaches. This week a handful of teams, including the Cowboys, Cardinals, Falcons, Colts and Steelers, partially reopened their facilities to no more than 75 staffers in the first phase of the NFL’s slow reopening. Most NFL team buildings, including the Seahawks’, remain closed to everyone.
The NFL has the disadvantage of more players to protect and with which to enforce new safety protocols than teams have in MLS, or in Major League Baseball, the NBA and National Hockey League. NFL teams have 90 players on the offseason roster, 55 in season. Each MLS team has a maximum of 30 players.
And football players inherently violate social distancing on every single snap, banging into or at least contacting each other on every play, even in training.
But the NFL has one, huge advantage over all the other leagues: time.
MLS, the NBA, NHL and MLB had to suspend their seasons because of the pandemic. The NFL season ended in February, just before the nation shut down. It does not begin for 2020 until September. The first time NFL players will be on the field for practices is likely to be for the start of training camps. Those are scheduled to begin in the last week of July.
So the league is waiting, and watching. Watching MLS, the NBA and the Bundesliga in Germany that resumed play in empty stadiums last weekend, for early reads on how to return from months of coronavirus shutdown. The trick is doing that in our society that still lacks widespread testing for the COVID-19 virus, testing that public-health officials say is essential to restarting sports safely.
MLS allowed its teams to reopen facilities two weeks ago. That was after concerns that players were putting themselves at risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 by training on their own in parks and other public venues where there are limited or no safeguards against the spread of the virus.
The Sounders and MLS teams are controlling their team training environments per local safety protocols and physical-distancing measures by allowing players, on a voluntary basis, back on the practice fields for individual workouts. This applies to all professional players within the club, including rostered players for Tacoma Defiance, the Sounders’ reserve team that competes in the United Soccer League. The Defiance’s USL Championship league season has also been suspended indefinitely.
“Though it’s a small step in our road back to normalcy, we are pleased to have been given the green light by our regional authorities to begin voluntary individual player workouts tomorrow at Starfire,” Sounders general manager Garth Lagerwey said. “We continue to work constantly with our government officials in Washington state, in addition to public health authorities and Major League Soccer, and we are thankful to everyone involved in that collaborative process that we are able to push forward.”
MLS’ intent is to become the first American pro sports league to restart its season, in tournament-style play early July in Orlando.
Florida has deemed professional sports an essential business and has reopened much of its state. The MLS plan is to put about 1,000 players, coaches and support staff from all its teams quarantined in a resort near DisneyWorld so they can play games in DisneyWorld and around Orlando, with no fans attending.
Before they began their individual player workouts this week, the Sounders submitted to MLS a plan on how they were going to adhere to health and safety protocols. Those include:
- Restricting training facility access to essential staff only, with specific staff listed in the plan.
- Sanitizing and disinfecting all training equipment and spaces, including disinfection of any equipment used by players (balls, cones, goals) between every session.
- Completion of a standard screening assessment survey by each player prior to every arrival at the training site, and temperature checks upon arrival at the facility. Players and staff arrive and depart at staggered times, with designated parking spaces maintaining a maximum distance between vehicles.
- Player use of personal protective equipment from the parking lot to the field, and again on return to the parking lot.
- Staff use of the appropriate personal protective equipment throughout training, while also maintaining a minimum distance of 10 feet from players at all times.
- Required hand-washing and disinfectant stations for use before and after individual workouts.
- Exclusive use of only the outdoor fields at Starfire, divided into a maximum of four quadrants per field. A maximum of one player per quadrant may participate per training session with no equipment sharing or playing (passing, shooting) between players.
- Having an emergency action plan for all COVID-19 related issues.
The Sounders’ individual player workout protocol prohibits access to team’s indoor facilities at Starfire, including but not limited to locker rooms, team gyms, and training rooms. Only players receiving team medical and rehabilitation treatment following surgeries and injuries are allowed into Sounders’ team gyms and training rooms, as directed by the team’s chief medical officer in adherence to the MLS’ guidelines to reopening facilities.
MLS recently extended its moratorium on small-group and team training from May 15 to at least June 1. That matches Gov. Jay Inslee’s date for his latest stay-at-home order for Washington.
“We look forward to welcoming our players back for individual workouts, albeit from a safe social distance under the league’s new guidelines,” Lagerwey said.
The NBA announced last month that May 8 was the earliest day teams could reopen facilities for individual player workouts. The Portland Trail Blazers, owned by the trust of the late Paul Allen that also owns the Seahawks, were among the first teams to partially reopen their building on May 8.
The Cleveland Cavaliers were another. Cavaliers five-time NBA All-Star Kevin Love described going in a designated side entrance to the team building, getting his temperature taken and being asked health questions. Each Cavs player had his own half court to work out on. Each player had an assistant coach, wearing a mask and gloves, accompanying him to pass and rebound.
Thursday, the Minnesota Timberwolves and Orlando Magic made it about half of the NBA’s 30 teams with their facilities open to players for individual workouts. The Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers are reportedly opening their buildings to players this Memorial Day holiday weekend. The Clippers reportedly have tested each of their players for COVID-19.
NBA guidelines instruct teams to permit only four players to be in the building at a time, and they must maintain a distance of 12 feet between one another.
Like in MLS, showers are off limits at NBA team facilities for players following workouts. Like youth-team kids, the basketball and soccer pros go home to shower after workouts right now.
In a glimpse of what public access to a Seahawks return to practicing might look like, the Sounders are following strict social-distancing guidelines to provide fans looks at their players’ training. The Sounders communications department gathers still photography, “b-roll” video and player sound bites following each closed, individual workout. The Sounders disseminate that content daily to a preregistered list of media members for use.
This story was originally published May 22, 2020 at 12:50 PM.
