News, Culture and NPR for Central & Northern Michigan
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
91.7FM Alpena and WCML-TV Channel 6 Alpena are off the air. Click here to learn more.

Summer training kicks off for CMU football

"Football Field" by danxoneil is licensed under CC BY 2.0

For college football teams, summer is a key part of pre-season training. This week CMU kicked off its summer training, albeit with special precautions to protect staff and players.

When gyms were closed due to COVID 19, it set a lot of athletes back in their conditioning training. Brian Wiese is the head football athletic trainer for CMU, he said training has had to be drastically changed to fit the needs of the returning athletes who have now lost out on months of training.

"We’ve had the longest period of time where our student athletes have been away from the resources and the programming associated with college football, so when they’re coming back to us we’re viewing them more like they’re a freshman coming out of high school," Wiese said.

And while they're treating the athletes like freshman in a way, actual freshman and transfers to the team are nowhere to be seen, for now the summer training is only for returning students, and even for them it's only voluntary. He said a lot of students' plans were changed by Covid-19 so a lot can't come back quite yet, and they understand that those that can may not even feel safe doing so yet.

“If they don’t feel comfortable or their family doesn’t feel comfortable with them being here on campus yet at this time, 100% okay. Because we’re here as a resource for those wanting to be here now that the NCAA has allowed us to open up,” said Wiese.

For those that have returned, they aren't heading straight to training either, the program is mandating a two week monitoring period to make sure players are health and free of symptoms that could point to Coronavirus. Wiese reiterated that right now it's all about conditioning, getting the players back up to the shape they were in, so at this point the players are doing general excercise as opposed to practicing football specifically. That also doesn't mean they're in weight rooms either, training is also all outside still, maintaining social distance, and minimizing contact.

Wiese said the fall season is still an uncertainty as to what it will look like, and even with summer training it is unclear when they'll get to start with more traditional football drills. For these the program is waiting for further guidance from the NCAA and the state of Michigan.

Related Content