By Harry Minium
Heroes is a word that is often overused, but when it comes to COVID-19, doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers truly were heroes.
And if there were heroes for ODU athletics when we were in the middle of the worst pandemic in more than a century, it was Scott Johnson, ODU's associate athletic director for athletic training and sports medicine, and his staff of 10 dedicated athletic trainers.
He and his staff are healthcare workers who worked hellishly long hours during the 2020-21 athletic season. And yes, they put themselves at risk to keep ODU athletic teams competing.
The pandemic hit 17 months ago and shut down spring sports in 2020. Eventually, ODU also canceled the 2020 fall sports season, and other than football, shifted those sports to the spring.
Johnson and his staff conducted more than 14,000 COVID-19 tests and did contact tracing on the 150 athletes who tested positive. And that's in addition to the usual pre-game and post-game treatments, taping and rehabbing they did with athletes.
An aside here, that's an incredible statement on how responsible athletes were in maintaining team "bubbles," in which they spent time only with their teammates and essentially gave up their social lives.
That's a 1.07 percent positivity rate, far below the national average.
Here's another aside. Thanks in large part to the education ODU athletes have received from their coaches and Johnson's staff, more than 92 percent of all ODU athletes, coaches, athletic trainers and other athletic employees are vaccinated.
The numbers are even higher in ODU's two biggest revenue sports: 100 percent of ODU's men's basketball players and staff have been vaccinated and more than 98 percent of football players and staff.
Those numbers are far higher than at many other Football Bowl Subdivision schools. During the SEC's football media event last month, the average for the league's 14 football teams was announced as 60 percent.
ODU shut school down in the spring of 2020 and most classes were online in the fall and again the spring of 2021. However, athletes returned to campus and athletic competition began this past November and ODU's athletic trainers found themselves in uncharted territory.
No one was prepared for the pandemic and it took a lot of improvising for ODU's training staff to adapt.
Johnson said athletics was fortunate that in November of 2020, ODU opened its own testing lab. ODU has a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)-certified lab, an asset that even some medical schools lack. ODU used the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, considered the most accurate available.
While many colleges and universities had to wait days for test results, it only took hours for ODU to process COVID tests. Athletes were tested in the Jim Jarrett Administration Building, as were many students, staff and faculty members.
ODU's athletic trainers hadn't done contact tracing before and while a Johns Hopkins University online class taught them the basics, they had to learn much through experience. Each time there was a positive case, it resulted in dozens of phone calls to people who may have been exposed.
"It was tedious but necessary work," Johnson said.
Although many teams had to postpone a match or a game, ODU's winter and spring sports teams played the vast majority of their contests.
"What Scott and his athletic training staff did was amazing," said Athletic Director Wood Selig.
"They were under the same kind of stress and strain as everyone else in America, but they were not only the frontline workers for athletics, they did a lot of testing for the University as well.
"They were working 12-to-14-hour days for months without a break because testing did not take a break.
"It fell on those nine or ten people to pretty much be there day in and day out and what amazed me was the level of consistency, the level of professionalism, the positive attitude they maintained throughout that process.
"I couldn't imagine going through what they went through for nine or ten months."
Anyone who knows Johnson wasn't surprised by how he and his staff performed. He's worked at ODU for 33 years, including 19 seasons as trainer for the ODU men's basketball program.
He's always been a hard worker, always easy-going and never buckled under pressure.
He came to ODU in 1986 to work on his master's degree and after graduating, worked for a year at Virginia Military Institute. He was hired by ODU in 1988 and hasn't left since.
He tutored under Marty Bradley, a hall of fame athletic trainer who worked at ODU for 43 years. Johnson came here at a time when ODU had a staff of just three athletic trainers.
When Bradley retired a couple of years ago, Selig said that Johnson filled in seamlessly.
Johnson said the past 17 months have been the most trying of his life.
"Sometimes, when I look back at it all, I wonder how we were able to get through it," he said.
At first, officials said that the pandemic would be under control in a few weeks, then a few months. As school remained closed, his staff began to worry about layoffs. Johnson tried to keep them busy with other work.
When they came back on campus, "it was a struggle," he said. "You had to have your head on a swivel every day.
"It was hardest on our coaches," he added. "The athletes were great. It was more difficult for the coaches because they were accustomed to being in control of things and this was something no one was in control of.
"When they got a call from me, it meant I was upsetting their world. When you shut down a team for a few weeks, they worry about their players, their mental health, about how they're going to get meals."
Before players could be cleared to return after a positive test, they needed a full round of cardiac testing. Johnson said Suffolk cardiologist George A. Sarris "got our people into testing as quickly as he could, and he's still doing it."
Dr. Selig allowed Johnson to hire some additional trainers to lighten the workload as much as possible, but 12-hour days were the norm.
When the vaccines became available, Johnson and his staff began asking athletes if they intended to get vaccinated.
"When they said no, at that point we would give them the facts about why you should get vaccinated," he said. "We didn't pressure anyone. We just wanted them to have the facts."
One of the biggest inducements to getting vaccinated was that you no longer had to have your nose swabbed three times a week. And as someone whose nose was often swabbed, it got old very quickly.
The handful of unvaccinated ODU athletes will be tested once per week. Eventually, Johnson said he hopes all athletes become vaccinated.
As the spring season drew to a close, Selig, head coaches and senior administrators began quietly collecting money and gifts to show their appreciation for Johnson and his 10 trainers.
Jason Mitchell, Justin Walker, Lexi George, Rachelle Bowman, Danielle Jackson, Angela Moening, Bobby Broddus, Andilynn Beadles, Alex Trimble and Sydney Lester were called into a meeting room next to Selig's office, where they all received gift cards, ODU shirts and cash.
In all, each one collected about $500 apiece.
"What happened is that a couple of our head coaches called and texted and they wanted to do something to personally thank the training staff," Selig said.
"That showed to me how our coaches feel about the entire sports medicine staff, how valued they are by everyone here."
"It was a total surprise, and meant so much to everyone on our staff," Johnson said.
Johnson has seen massive changes in ODU since he began working here in 1988. Foreman Field has been replaced by Kornblau Field at S.B. Ballard Stadium. The L.R. Hill Sports Complex opened, with training facilites for football and a new field hockey/lacrosse field. A soccer stadium and volleyball center have been built.
The men's basketball team no longer plays at Scope and the ODU fieldhouse, once home to the women's team, is gone. Instead, both play at Chartway Arena, the finest facility in Conference USA and there is an $8.1 million basketball performance center next door.
Football was introduced in 2009 and now ODU plays on the highest level allowed in the NCAA, the FBS.
"Athletics here is so much different, so much bigger than it was when I came here," he said. "We've had some memorable wins and some great defeats.
"But the thing that stands out to me is the people here, from Marty Bradley to everyone else I've worked with. I really love this University."
Asked about his favorite moments at the University, he was there when ODU upset Big East champion Villanova in the 1995 NCAA tournament. He was overjoyed after ODU's football team upset No. 13 Virginia Tech in 2018 in one of the last games at Foreman Field.
He calls the first football game at the stadium, against Chowan in 2009, another amazing moment.
"I remember sitting there with my wife, Elena, watching the marching band come onto the field before the game and it was a surreal moment," he said.
"Tailgate lots were full of people as if we'd always played football. Adding football was a dramatic change for ODU."
But his favorite moment may have come in the athletic training room a few months ago, when women's tennis player Alexandra Viktorovich walked in and asked him to look at a video on her cell phone.
She showed Johnson the match-clinching point when ODU won the Conference USA title. Viktorovich clinched the title by defeating Florida International's Kristina Miletic (6-2, 6-7, 6-1).
"It was just so awesome," he said. "Seeing their success, their joy in winning, the sense of accomplishment, it was just so special. Those girls worked so hard.
"And this year more than ever, it might not have been possible without the help of the sports medicine staff.
"Our entire staff was amazing. The amount of testing they did, the contact tracing, and then still being able to do what they are trained to do as athletic trainers, was such a difficult task.
"They should all feel a great sense of satisfaction."
As should Johnson.
Minium was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in his 39 years at The Virginian-Pilot and won 27 state and national writing awards. He covers all ODU athletics for odusports.com Follow him on Twitter @Harry_MiniumODU, Instagram @hbminium1 or email hminium@odu.edu
Minium: Scott Johnson and Athletic Trainers Were True Heroes for ODU During the Pandemic
