Abstract
After the COVID‐19 crisis brought sports activities to a sudden halt, college athletics staff worked on developing new ways to handle daily responsibilities. This included adapting to new communication methods in the midst of difficult circumstances.
MIKE CERINO
“As someone who has been more of a face‐to‐face communicator and motivator, it has been an interesting challenge to keep up with all of the different ways of staying in touch. The exciting part is that I am getting better at it,” said Mike Cerino, Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics at Limestone College in South Carolina for 15 years of his 31‐year athletics career.
“I'm so proud of our staff — our senior administrators down to our head coaches — and the ways they have found to stay in touch with our recruits and to stay in communication with compliance on how to reinstate scholarships” and many other issues, said Cerino, a recipient of a 2018–19 Under Armour AD of the Year Award for Division II. “It's really been amazing to watch people rally. They say a crisis brings out the best in people, but it also really brings out the creativity in people,” he said, noting the significant development in his staff as they've all adapted as best they can to a new normal of FaceTime and texts in lieu of in‐person meetings.
But some aspects remain especially difficult, such as the absence of the student‐athletes, Cerino noted. “It's affected so many families differently, so it's really important for our coaches to be a lifeline for our student‐athletes as they're experiencing these different emotions from so many different parts of the country. It's one thing to have everyone in one room in a team meeting, but it's very difficult when one person is in a hot spot and another is in a beautiful area in the country where not much is going on,” he said.
The department's mental health program and app, combined with connections to third‐party providers, provided support to staff and student‐athletes impacted on a more personal level by the crisis, Cerino noted.
Without the usual practices and competitions for coaches to oversee, Cerino encouraged coaches to focus on recruiting and retention as well as preparing to manage the challenges to come, especially having “more fifth‐year student‐athletes still on campus competing, and in essence a double freshman class,” he said. To overcome these unique challenges, coaches adopted the three‐pronged focus Cerino recommended: “Do your job — all aspects of it; be available; and over‐communicate.”
Email Mcerino@limestone.edu.
Crisis brings valuable lessons learned.
When Mike Cerino, Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics at Limestone College, thinks back on the moment when the NCAA called for college sports to shut down due to the COVID‐19 pandemic, he recalls his department scrambling to rein in a program that was spread out in so many different directions. Several winter sports teams were in the midst of participating in various NCAA events, while many spring sports teams were away on spring break trips. This meant they had “numerous teams on the road from Florida to Alabama all the way up to South Dakota,” he recalled. “We had a group of coaches preparing for NCAA events and crucial early season contests, and then we were suddenly thrust into crisis mode.”
Bringing everyone back to campus safely at the same time and on short notice presented unique challenges, he said. “We acted properly, using our sports administrators to contact coaches directly to explain the situation, but we could have done a better job at communicating one message. You can walk through it like a fire drill, but it doesn't feel real until you live it,” he acknowledged. The aspect of dealing with different regions and different divisions shutting down at varying times added multiple layers of complexity, and could've benefited from having “a better set of plans in place,” he said. Cerino plans to develop applicable policies and increase tabletop exercises.
The necessary focus on logistics and the abundance of unknowns interfered with providing student‐athletes with immediate emotional support and answers to pressing questions as they wrestled with concerns about their health and safety and that of their family members, combined with their eligibility and schoolwork, Cerino noted. But that was handled much better a couple of days later, when staff held small face‐to‐face breakout sessions and made better use of Teamworks, a tool that simultaneously sends updates to all student‐athletes’ phones.