Helping Schools Return to Play Safely

October 27, 2020 / Athletic Administration • Facilities

As schools — both at the varsity and collegiate levels — continue to safely return to sports amid the COVID-19 pandemic, sports industry leaders are aiding athletic administrators in that attempt.

Coach & Athletic Director magazine reached out to some industry leaders to see what they are doing to ensure that student-athletes stay safe and healthy between the lines and within athletic facilities.

Here, they share in their own words what they are doing to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic and return to some sense of normalcy.

InMotionAir

INMOTIONAir supports our schools’ efforts to safely get their teams back on the field and game ready for opening day. Our flexible line of AIRCELL products can help schools get back in the game early while helping coaches comply with CDC guidance for athletics in a COVID-19 environment. AIRCELL products set up easily indoors, enabling batting practice and drills to be conducted safely in school gyms and fieldhouses when outdoor practices are not an option. When Spring arrives, our products transition easily to natural or artificial turf fields with the same fast and easy setup and take-down, and unbeatable portability. While coaches and athletes will like the ease with which INMOTIONAir products support serious training without sacrificing safety, athletic directors will love the low wear and tear and added flexibility our products bring to their new facilities.

Frio Hydration

We knew back in the spring that, if our schools were going to return to any sort of athletic normalcy in the fall, their hydration practices were going to have to be different. So we developed our patent-pending Hands-Free Hydration System that connects to almost any existing hydration system and allows athletes to access water with foot pedals – and without getting near each other.

The result: we’re on track to increase sales by at least 20 percent in 2020! Dallas ISD alone has purchased 152 of the devices, and coaches across the country have said they aren’t sure how they would have done hydration without this system. Teams without the device rely mostly on athletes keeping up with their own water bottles, and, really, that’s just not a great plan. I know we have helped prevent heat illnesses and I hope our product is preventing COVID illnesses too. We simply wanted to do our part to see sports back in action.

Vital Signs Wall of Fame

As a digital sign company, the pandemic caused us at VitalSigns Wall of Fame to search for how we could protect our touchscreen users from both real and perceived concerns related to the use of shared surfaces. While searching for ways to keep our Wall of Fame customers safe, we decided to partner with Matrix Antimicrobial to provide districts with BioShield-75, an industrially tested biostatic barrier. BioShield-75 forms a protective shield on any surface, kills microbes on contact and remains effective for 90 days.

» ALSO SEE: AHSAA Releases Best Practices for Winter Sports Season

Unlike traditional sanitizers and disinfectants, BioShield does not need to be applied daily, does not use toxic chemicals, and does not leave any sticky residues behind, making it the right solution for our products. Our team is committed to caring for our community by making their health, well-being, and peace of mind a priority as they focus on returning to normal.

C&H Baseball

“Between the lights, we stand in this together we are: for it is this moment to shine, all because baseball is and always will be American’s favorite pastime.” C&H 2020

In this unprecedented year for everyone, C&H Baseball believes that we have been here for over 50 years and look forward to serving baseball for many more years. As we have navigated this year, we were in line for our best sales year ever. That quickly changed in March just like many of our customers have experienced. As a family-owned business, we want to see teams have the best quality products going into the 2021 Season. Our team decided to give back to our industry, by boldly and offering 20% off all C&H made in the USA products to high school and college programs through the end of 2020.