WINSTON-SALEM — The level of personal responsibility for Wake Forest football coach Dave Clawson extends beyond the health of his players and the caretaking of the program while working toward a potential fall season in a COVID-19 world.
Clawson has been isolating from his family since July 12 as a precautionary measure.
Clawson’s wife, Catherine, is a cancer survivor and has an increased risk of complications should she contract the coronavirus, because of a diminished number of white blood cells, according to an ESPN report.
“I was going to stay in a hotel, or I was even looking at getting one of those sleeping pods and putting it in the office and sleeping there,” Clawson said this month. “My son's school decided that they're going to go online for the first four to six weeks. So, my wife and son will stay out of town so I can stay at the house. If at any point, his school becomes live in person, then I'll get that order for the sleeping pod back up or stay at a hotel.”
Clawson’s daughter, Courtney, attends Davidson College, where students are back on campus and classes started Thursday. His son, Eric, is in high school.
“So we're quarantining from each other,” the seventh-year Demon Deacons coach said. “I was able to see (Catherine) a little bit ago. I kind of quarantined for a bit, took a COVID-19 test and saw them for a quick weekend, but over the last, I don't know five or six weeks, I've probably seen them a total of four or five days.”
With a multitude of challenges and changes in attempting to forge ahead with a football season in the middle of a pandemic, Clawson said isolating from his family has “been the worst, most challenging part” of it all.
“It's not fun,” he said. “You get married to someone because you enjoy spending time with them. And if you're in a good marriage and you enjoy spending time with your wife, this is hard. We didn't take this as a perspective of complaining or woe is us. People in the military have to do this all the time, and they're risking their lives. And through COVID-19, you have medical professionals that every single day work with COVID-19 patients and put their lives on the line.”
Steadfast in his perspective, Clawson said that as difficult as it is to be away from his family, the choice to do so wasn’t.
“I’m coaching football, and we'll be fine,” he said. “It's not fun. It's not an enjoyable aspect of it. It's not a hard decision, it’s just an unfortunate circumstance of COVID-19. But we'll get through it, we'll be fine, and it'll make it that much more (enjoyable). It's like seeing your players. When I do get to spend time with them, I'll probably appreciate it and enjoy it even more, even though I do enjoy it when I do it on a daily basis.
“That's been way harder than managing all the protocols we have. It’s just, you go home from work at night and you look forward to seeing your wife and your kids, and to not have that mentally is tough. I was single the first six years I coached, so you just dive completely into your job.”
During the lead-up to Wake Forest’s first preseason practice Aug. 15, Clawson said he was honest with his team that he’s not sure if its first game, Sept. 12 against Clemson under the Atlantic Coast Conference’s new modified schedule, will be able to be played in this time of uncertainty.
“I told our team that I'm not 100-percent sure we're going to play, I don't think anybody is, but based on what they've done, how they've handled themselves, the sacrifices they've made, I think it's worth still trying to try to play,” he said. “If we can manage this next segment of getting the students back and trying to stay, relatively speaking, COVID-19 free, we'll have an opportunity to play games. If that doesn't happen, then it's going to be challenging and difficult.”
Since students have returned to ACC campuses, both North Carolina and North Carolina State have scrubbed in-person classes and moved to virtual learning after outbreaks of coronavirus clusters. On-campus instruction for Wake Forest students is scheduled to begin Wednesday.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Wake Forest's Clawson calls isolation from family 'most challenging part' of pandemic
