Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
By Tom Archdeacon
As he waited to get his COVID-19 test at the Wright State Physicians Health Center early Friday morning — something all players, coaches and staff connected to the Raiders men’s and women’s basketball programs do three times a week — Jason Franklin had a few minutes to talk.
Normally you’d say the one guy on whom the fortunes of WSU’s men’s basketball most rest would be Scott Nagy, who’s in his 25th year as a college head coach, or the Raiders 6-foot-8 senior center Loudon Love, the Horizon League Player of the Year last season.
But with college basketball caught in the full court press of a pandemic, the Raiders’ big man on campus has to be Franklin.
He is WSU’s longtime athletic trainer and now the in-house COVID expert.
Yet, when he heard himself referred to as such, it made him laugh…wearily.
“I will say I’ve never gone through anything like this,” he admitted. “I don’t think anyone has.”
He’s the guy charged with implementing the ever-changing guidelines set by the CDC, along with those of the NCAA and the local health department. And then there are the different requirements WSU teams must meet when they face other schools, in other conferences, often in different states.
“We played Marshall last night and they had different rules we had to follow to play them,” he said. “Our women are going to Michigan this weekend and they have different rules. They test six times a week.”
