When Houston Baptist quarterback Bailey Zappe finished practice on Tuesday, he went to the socially distanced locker room with his mask on, got changed, checked his Teamworks app and walked into the visitor locker room at Husky Stadium. 

Unlike last season, the facility won’t be the site of a breakout season, a winning record and boundless optimism. In fact, it’s impossible for the Huskies to match the four home wins from Fall 2019 all season long. The only residents of the visitor locker room in 2020 is a rotating set of nurses and trainers trying to meet the daunting task of continuously testing an entire football program three times a week.

These specific nurses are from Methodist Health System’s private labs, one of multiple providers that Houston Baptist has contracted with to try and meet the testing demands. After Zappe signed a new round of paperwork, the nurse took a six-inch swab and twisted it around for a good 10 seconds. 

“It’s not a pleasant feeling, but you’ve got to do it,” Zappe said.

But while Zappe and his teammates only see the final result of testing, it took an unbelievable amount of work just to get the testing resources to campus.  

“It’s been a bit of a scramble 10-14 days out to get all that stuff in place,” said Richie Valdes, assistant AD for sports medicine and performance at Houston Baptist. 

The Southland Conference postponed fall football in August, but Houston Baptist had no intention of sitting around. The Huskies scheduled additional games against Texas Tech and Louisiana Tech earlier this year, and were already set to play North Texas. HBU ranks as just one of two Southland teams that opted to schedule teams from multiple FBS conferences in Fall 2020. 

Conference USA sent over paperwork officially mandating three tests a week on Aug. 26, one day before Texas Football spoke to Valdes. In the short 10 days before the Huskies were scheduled to take the field against North Texas, the university had to quickly finalize plans.

When the university went out to find enough tests for a whole football team, it spoke to private labs, private practices, urgent cares and hospital systems. Ultimately, the complication of Houston’s serious COVID-19 situation hung over the whole situation. 

“We’ve made sure that the people that we’ve talked to have the capacity to where we’re not taking away from emergency capacity,” Valdes said. “That’s the benefit that Houston has versus other towns in our conference where that number is one and the same.” 

So to keep the capacity manageable, Houston Baptist organizes testing from three completely separate labs. The Tuesday swab is done by Methodist Health Center. The rapid tests that HBU got done on Thursday are through Neighbors Emergency Center, a major ER chain in Houston. No lab does testing on Sundays, so Houston Baptist organized a self-swab through Fulgent Genetics, a national company that originally built up capacity to aid the Pac-12 before the Power Five league shut down. 

When Houston Baptist plays against Big 12 opponent Texas Tech on Sept. 12, the testing will change up again. Instead of a Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday rotation, the Big 12 mandates Sunday-Wednesday-Friday testing. 

“Fortunately we’ve gotten into a pretty good system of being able to adapt to whatever really is asked of us,” said Houston Baptist coach Vic Shealy. “We want them to feel like we respect everything that’s been asked of us just like we want our players to feel like they’re in the safest environment to play a ball game.” 

Of course, all the testing measures are on top of a number of protocols that the players have been following since coming back to campus. Players are secluded and only living with other football players. The vast majority are taking online-only classes to stay out of the general student population and try to keep a self-enforced bubble. Masks are required whenever they go out. 

Every day when they go into the football facilities, everyone gets their temperature checked at the door and sanitizes their hands. During practice, players are required to wear gaiter-style masks whenever their helmets are off. 

“Everybody has taken it seriously and nobody has really gone out and went to parties and clubs or anything,” Zappe said. “Everyone has really kept themselves in this bubble. I’m really proud of our guys taking this seriously and helping us be able to do games this fall.” 

Communicating to players from a variety of different places and backgrounds that they needed to take the virus seriously wasn’t easy. Issues like wearing masks have surprisingly become a political issue, but Shealy tried to lean on doctors to speak plainly about outcomes and scientific data. The results have been positive, far better than the world around them. 

However, gone are the opportunities for coaches and teammates to wrap their arm around a player, get close, see them up close and smile, the kind of things Shealy usually judges his team’s camaraderie on. There’s a different weight everyone carries knowing the stakes. 

“When you get on the practice field, that’s the best part of the day. That’s when we’re with our kids and our kids get to play what they love playing,” Shealy said. “Everything else, you just feel such a burden to motivate, to encourage, to help guys stay focused and to just have that constant vision. Everything we’re doing is to try and do that safely.” 

Zappe, a Victoria East product and Preseason All-Texas Small College selection who will return for a fifth-year senior season in Fall 2021, admits that sometimes he does think about whether the testing, the masks, the protocols, the online classes, the distancing are worth it just to play. 

“But we’re here to play football,” Zappe said. “That’s why we’re here is to play football and get an education...it’s a great opportunity to prove to ourselves and everyone else in the country that HBU’s on the come-up.” 

Houston Baptist originally budgeted enough money for once-a-week testing during the Southland Conference season. When the season went from 11 games at one test a week to three games that required three tests a week, Houston Baptist used the funding from the added Louisiana Tech game to pay for changes. 

That leaves the million dollar question – maybe literally. If the Southland Conference played a conference schedule in the spring with mandatory testing, would Houston Baptist be able to piece together more labs, pony up the money and make it happen? Is Houston Baptist able to do this all over again? 

“We know what’s in front of us now,” Valdes said. “Instead of putting all our eggs in that spring basket, let’s go with what we think we can do right now. If we’re not able to do [spring football] then we’re not able to do it, but we can go in knowing that what we did in the fall gave our guys the best opportunities to go out there and get back to a semblance of normalcy.”