Due to the pandemic, athletics have been presented with new challenges they have not had to deal with in the past. Augustana’s head football coach, Coach Steve Bell, recently tested positive for COVID-19. This has caused the football team to shut down all practices and lifting for two weeks, and having to quarantine some of their players.
Senior quarterback, Alek Jacobs, was one of the players sent home. 
“I think we stopped it before it could have gotten out of control. We’ve been doing this for a couple months now and I think we’ve had a total of 4 cases, so for a group of 150 people, that isn’t too bad,” Jacobs said.
Mikey Scarpinato, a junior wide receiver, was one of the four to test positive and be sent into quarantine housing. 
“It was just me in the quarantine housing, so that was kind of lonely,” Scarpinato said. “I was there for ten days and was asymptomatic. It was hard because I couldn’t really do anything football related other than watch film.”
Ian Gorken, a freshman wide receiver, was sent back to his hometown.
“I was fortunate enough to have a local gym, but that was all I was able to do,” Gorken said.
As the team starts practice back up, Scarpinato gave insight on how the team will be more careful moving forward. 
“We will for sure continue wearing masks under our helmets [and] socially distancing on the sidelines and whenever we can. On top of that, 25% of our roster gets tested weekly, so I feel like we are doing everything we can,” Scarpinato said.  
Jacobs also felt the team was in a good place.
“I think we’re just going to try and keep being careful. We are going to get cases no matter what, so we just need to keep reevaluating as we move along,” Jacobs said.