Although traditional spring sports are not happening this season, athletic conditioning has made a return to the El Camino College campus.

In February of this year, the presidents of South Coast Conference (SCC) made the decision to suspend athletic competition for traditional spring sports for the 2021 season.

“A lot of colleges aren’t opting in, aren’t able to compete, that [the SCC doesn’t] have enough to have a conference competition,” Jennifer Cardone, Interim Executive Director of the California Community College Athletic Association (CCCAA), said.

Although there were some colleges that opted into spring sports, ECC was not one of those colleges.

“El Camino has opted out of spring competition,” Colin Preston, former Director of Athletics and Kinesiology, said in an interview five days prior to leaving ECC. “If all of a sudden things get drastically better, I don’t know if there will be a reevaluation, but El Camino College is not competing in spring sports.”

Although conference competition was out of the question, leadership at SCC focused on returning conditioning to campuses that are part of their conference.

“These conversations have been ongoing since last March, when COVID-19 shut all athletics down,” Preston said.

Preston, along with athletic trainer Abi Francisco, have been working to try and get sports back onto campus.

“It was incredibly frustrating,” Francisco said. “We ran into a ton of red tape, a ton of hurdles we had to try and get through with the state, then at a smaller, level the county and an even smaller level, the institution.”

As time went on, and different groups and schools of varying levels began bringing back sports, ECC continued to talk about starting the process to bring back sports, and began doing so in phases, while keeping an eye on Los Angeles County Public Health guidelines and their COVID-19 hospitalization numbers.

“Athletics has always had a plan to return in phases,” Preston said. “Phase one is doing conditioning, where you social distance, you’re not sharing equipment; phase two would involve equipment and starting to do more individual skill work and small groups; and phase three would be having your standardized practices and last days would be going into competition.”

As ECC has begun allowing conditioning, student athletes who wish to participate must provide multiple pieces of information in order to do so.

“Before they can even step onto campus, every student athlete needs a negative COVID-19 PCR test.” Francisco said. “They also have to fill out a lot of forms regarding risk, liability, and medical history.”

After evaluating if student athletes have had infection or interaction with anyone infected with COVID-19, students are allowed to enter campus, sign in, get a temperature check, and get a wristband to wear while conditioning.

“Each day is a different color, so that way we know that everyone on the field and on the campus is allowed to be on the campus,” Francisco said. “Not only do the student athletes do this, but the coaches do this everyday as well.”

Testing will also continue for students and staff throughout the entire conditioning process. Sports that do start returning to campus for conditioning, starting March 10, will be on campus for an hour and a half each session, but will be staggered throughout each week.

“Each sport right now has two days on campus,” Francisco said. “Take football, they’ll do Monday [and] Wednesday; you take softball, they do Tuesday [and] Thursday, so that way we space it out, we minimize exposure to other teams [and] to other people.”

Although it is currently unknown how long phase one of the ECC sports recovery plan will last, the first step towards some normalcy in the athletics department has been taken.

“The fact that we are all together, seeing each other after a whole year, it makes all the work that we did worthwhile.” Francisco said. “We missed each other, the teams, the student athletes missed each other, even though all they are doing is running, they are just really happy to be here.”