Wildcat Weekly: Dr. Bob Dranoff (2020-21 Episode 12)

When [the pandemic] was first starting to come down, we were having our basketball tournament at University of the District of Columbia. I had pulled coaches aside, we were first starting to hear about COVID and the problems and what was going on in in other leagues and in Division I. I pulled the coaches together, and said, 'Listen, you know, we don't have a ton of precautions here, but one of the things I'm hearing is that we need to be careful with even shaking hands. So, do we want to make a decision here that we won't shake hands?' And we had a discussion on that, and whatever we ended up deciding, I don't even remember, but it's amazing how nine months later we're still worried about social distancing and how we're going to get through this stuff.

The conference as a whole, the presidents voted that they would use the NCAA policies as the minimum standard for operating to every degree possible. And so, that makes our planning not easier, but at least it gives us a direction. The NCAA has also done an amazing job. Dr. Brian Hainline, who's the director of the Sport Sciences Institute at the NCAA, partners with these national organizations, both in sports and outside, to come up with plans. And it's not a one-size-fits-all kind of plan. Schools have different resources, different sports, different facilities, so we're going to do the best we can. What I would say to you is that everyone has an idea and a commitment to [COVID] test, which is going to be a requirement when it comes to basketball, and they're going to abide by the testing policies.

I take very seriously the responsibility, from an educational perspective, of what we could do to supplement what's happening on campuses and in the lives of those student-athletes. I come from a background in athletics where I have always worked real closely with student-athlete groups. I look at it as education. Athletics is a big part of education. And so, in response to what was going on in our country and on our campuses back in the summer, in response to the deaths of George Floyd and others, we thought that we needed to have a conversation. And that was brought to the light to me by both student-athletes, coaches, administrators asking if we were considering doing something to bring different ideas together.

We are, I think in a lot of ways, the reality of what small athletic conferences, the challenges we have, and the reality of higher education, which all our institutions have challenges when it comes to enrollment and funding and things like that. Some have been able to weather the storm. Daemen has great leadership and does an amazing job. We were lucky, honestly, when Roberts [Wesleyan] and Daemen had an interest in transitioning from NAIA to Division II, and had an interest in us. And like you said, that western expansion has been big for us.