RUSTON – Mandy Miller.  Matt Martin.  Sadie Martin.  TJ Thurmond, Jr.  Jake Goluszka.  Myles Fish.  Bryce Jobson.  Lindsay Renterias.  Emi Calvo.  Kayla Wincko.  Amanda Clark.   
 
This was the Louisiana Tech Sports Medicine department for the 2020-21 athletic season.
 
A banded group of 11 athletic trainers, rivaling any superheroes assembled Marvel or DC Comics team. 
 
Because while they were not fighting Thanos or the Joker, they were superheroes fighting a much greater enemy.  A global pandemic.
 
The daily task of maintaining the overall health and well-being of all Bulldog and Lady Techster student-athletes, both physical and mental, suddenly became a daunting task on March 12, 2020.  Otherwise known as the day the sports world came to a screeching halt due to COVID-19.
 
Mandy Miller, head athletic trainer, can recall exactly where she was when everything changed.
 
"I was at the Conference USA Tournament," said Miller, who has been the athletic trainer for the women's basketball program since 2013.  "The team was warming on the court to play Middle Tennessee and I was in the locker room talking to coach Stoehr.  She had her phone in her lap and it rang.  She looked at me and said it is Tommy.
 
"There is not much reason for an athletic director to be calling 30 minutes before tip.  Then I heard her say in the conversation, 'Do we need to get them off the floor?'"
 
At that point, the team started making their way into the locker room.  The tournament had been canceled.  
 
There were not enough consoling hugs to go around.
 
Both the Lady Techster and Bulldog basketball teams made their way back to Ruston from Frisco that day.  By the time the charter buses parked at the Thomas Assembly Center, March Madness had been canceled as well as all the spring sports. 
 
The following week, schools shut down. 
 
While students were taking online classes and staff members were working from their dining rooms, the sports medicine staff began work on a return to campus plan. 
 
"Gerald Jordan, Matt Martin, Sadie Martin and myself started meeting up in the football press box where we could sit far apart from each other," said Miller.  "We could see that June was a potential target for when student-athletes would be coming back, so we needed to figure out guidelines.
 
"The best saying I heard was we were building the plane while flying it."
 
This process ended up being right in Sadie Martin's wheelhouse.
 
"I have a master's in public health and one of the biggest things I learned in that program was the importance of education to help change minds," said Martin, who enters her third year as an associate athletic trainer.  "It got very hectic, trying to figure out what our own situation would be.  We were preparing for something we had no idea what is was going to look like."
 
 Martin and the staff got busy, creating initial protocols, making screening forms, preparing spreadsheets to keep testing data, ordering testing supplies, etc. 
 
Meanwhile, the athletic training room, a hopping gathering spot for those receiving rehab, had become a ghost town.
 
That slowly started to change.  Football players started arriving in early June.  Both basketball programs in July.  Soccer, volleyball and cross country in early August.  Then everyone else in early September.
 
Also arriving during the summer was a new athletic trainer. 
 
"I started mid-July," said TJ Thurmond, Jr., who took over as the athletic trainer for the Bulldog basketball team.  "Job hunting was hard.  I did a virtual graduation after getting my masters from Tulane.  I would be sending out all of these applications, then would get these emails saying, 'Sorry, we are in a hiring freeze right now.'  It got difficult.
 
 "Honestly, this job came to me through my former boss who knew a couple of people at Tech.  Within a week of sending in my resume, I had an interview and an offer.  It was difficult moving during a pandemic, but luckily the staff was able to help me out a lot."
 
The athletic trainers were in charge of, well, almost everything COVID related. 
 
They sat outside the Davison Athletic Complex in the early hours, doing daily temperature checks with athletes and staff as they came to campus. 
 
They reinforced the need to always wear masks and stay at least six feet apart. 
 
Weekly duties in the training room became every day duties.  They would wipe down the treatment tables, which got bumped down from six to four to space things out more, after every athlete with disinfectant spray.  They were draining the whirlpool after each use.  The heat-pack covers were getting washed after each use.    
 
"We went through like a billion towels too," said Martin. 
 
Then there was the most crucial job of all … testing. 
 
"My first test when I got to Tech, that is when they basically touched my eyeballs," painfully remembered by Thurmond, Jr.  "It affected all of my senses.  It was rough.  That and the antigen tests they used to do with big cotton swabs that went about the same distance up your nose."
 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization did later figure out testing swabs could go a little shallower into the noses … and lots of people rejoiced.
 
Videos and instructions were provided on how to administer the tests.  Depending on the test, there were different ways and techniques to swab (drawing blood was always a possibility).   
 
As all fall sports moved to the spring, football – due to sheer numbers – ended up being the most challenging when it came to tracking the coronavirus. 
 
A player would test positive, then sports med would have to retrace that person's steps two days before their test date or two days before they became symptomatic.  Greater than 15 minutes over a 24-hour period and less than six feet with masks meant contact tracing. 
 
Let's just say student-athletes and staff members got nervous when they got a phone call from Sadie Martin, who was the person that got all of the results. 
 
The days got longer and longer for the trainers when all sports were on campus, doing their routine jobs on top of trying to keep everybody safe. 
 
Case in point a typical day described by Thurmond, Jr.
 
"I was normally up around 5:30 a.m.  I had to get testing ready for coaches, get them tested," he said.  "Then the team would roll in.  After about two hours, I got my testing done.  Sometimes I would have to be at the check-in station too or skip over to weights and work treatments.  If not, I was back at my desk working on paperwork.  Then by 11, I would rush home for a quick lunch, decompress, then I was back at the Thomas Assembly Center for taping, treatments, then practice for two hours.  Maybe some post practice treatment.  I was pulling 13 hour days for a while there."
 
"I could see by September, fatigue was already creeping in," said Miller about her team.  "It became a big worry for me because of the stress and the burden of all the testing.  The check-ins, all the COVID stuff, easily added three to five hours and our days were already long. 
 
"We made it work though because we are athletic trainers.  We are healthcare providers.  Even though we were the ones most exposed, which deep down was pretty worrisome, we put our heads down and did it."
 
Whether it was TJ consuming a full pot of coffee every day or Lindsay writing positive messages on the whiteboard or Sadie hand making cloth masks, the team developed ways of staying motivated. 
 
Plus, they had each other to lift their spirits up.  They had to, because they were expected to control the sometimes uncontrollable. 
 
Some of those uncontrollable … a hurricane and snow-mageddon.
 
Hurricane Laura took out almost all of Ruston's electrical grid, which in turn caused a COVID outbreak among the football team and the mutual cancellation of the season opener versus Baylor.
 
Then in mid-February, Snow-mageddon struck the city.  With almost every sport in season, athletic trainers rode around in four-wheel vehicles, testing people in pods to maintain protocols and procedures. 
 
(A tornado.  A pandemic.  A hurricane.  A snowstorm.  What the heck, Earth?!?)
 
March came around and Miller found herself back at the C-USA Tournament in Frisco, exactly one year after everything changed. 
 
"I had two emotional moments," said a teary-eyed Miller.  "One was before our first game.  We huddled in the locker room before going out on the floor.  It was right before the game started, and I realized we had made it.  The other was when we got back to Ruston.  We got off the bus.  Coach Stoehr looked at me, and I looked at her.  We gave each other a big hug and said, 'We did it.'"
 
Thirteen of the 16 LA Tech sports ended up in season at the same time during the spring.
 
By the time baseball put an official bow on the 2020-21 LA Tech Athletic season with the NCAA Regional in early June, the sports medicine staff had administered over 21,000 COVID tests.
 
"There is no way to adequately verbalize what our sports medicine staff did for us as an athletic department last year," said Tech VP and Director of Athletics Eric Wood.  "We had only two athletic competitions all season that were cancelled due to a Covid-19 issue within one of our teams.  Two.
 
"There is a lot of credit to spread around from our student-athletes to our coaches to our administration.  But it starts with the Herculean effort of our sports medicine department.  They were the real behind-the-scene heroes on the front lines every day, and their hard work allowed our student-athletes to compete while staying healthy."
 
Some final thoughts from the superheroes on an unconventional season. 
 
"I was happy about the success the basketball team had, but I was also happy for the season to end because I wanted to take two weeks off and go hide in a hole," said Thurmond, Jr.  "The season was a special one, but it was time to step away for a bit."
 
"I honestly feel like we lost a part of our soul," said Martin.  "It took an army.  It has been emotionally draining.  Nowadays, I get really excited to do the most basic parts of my job like ankle sprain rehabs."
 
"I am so thankful for this staff that we had this past year," said Miller.  "We were not without our bumps and bruises with two on our staff getting COVID.  It all goes back to the leadership and support here at Tech, the plan and the protocols that were developed.
 
"However, we are not out of the woods yet.  We are still testing, and the testing is not going to go away anytime soon."