‘We haven’t had a good week’: Chris Klieman shares unsettling K-State COVID update
Chris Klieman shared some potentially unsettling news about the Kansas State football roster near the end of his weekly radio show Thursday evening.
“We haven’t had a good week dealing with COVID already this week, with losing some guys,” Klieman said. “It’s just going to be a nonstop battle.”
That admission came five days after the Wildcats dropped their first game of the season 35-31 against the Arkansas State Red Wolves at Bill Snyder Family Stadium. Klieman didn’t elaborate on how many players K-State has recently lost because of positive tests or contract tracing, but the team was already low on numbers at several positions.
Klieman said the Wildcats took the field against Arkansas State without 35-40 players last week. And around 12 of the active players that entered the game had been out for two weeks before getting the all-clear to return to practice about three days before the game.
“That’s not an excuse,” Klieman said, “it’s just a reality of where we are at.”
That forced K-State to play without key contributors like Joshua Youngblood, Wykeen Gill, Khalid Duke and Christian Duffie. Add on the fact that starting center Noah Johnson, as well as starting safeties Jahron McPherson and Wayne Jones were unable to finish the game with injuries and K-State was hoping for a good week of health before its next game against Oklahoma on Sept. 26.
It is not known how many COVID-19 cases are active on the team, but Riley County has stopped listing K-State football as a source of coronavirus outbreak on the reports it shares three times a week. A report from KSNT, citing local health officials, indicated the Wildcats have had one new positive case this week.
This seemed like an important week of testing for the K-State football team, after Arkansas State was forced to postpone a game against Central Arkansas scheduled for Saturday, presumably because of rising COVID numbers on its roster. The school announced that it didn’t have enough healthy players at one position to play this weekend.
The good news for K-State is that it’s new COVID losses haven’t prevented the Wildcats from practicing this week. Klieman said on his radio show that the team was given Monday off and then practiced hard on the team’s grass fields for three straight days before getting Friday off.
Another practice is scheduled for Saturday. For now, it appears, the Wildcats remain on track to play Oklahoma next week.
“The practices have been really good,” Klieman said. “We have been down some numbers, but the practices have been really good.”
Klieman said the Wildcats have also responded well to some of the tough conversations they had as a team during Monday’s meetings.
“We had a really good week this week,” Klieman said, “not only on the field but off the field, as well.”
Klieman said earlier this week that he was hopeful that several of the players that missed the season-opener would be cleared to play against the Sooners.
But it sounds like at least some of those additions will be offset by losses from this week.
“It’s difficult to be in college athletics right now and obviously college football,” Klieman said, “with the climate we are in and COVID-19.”
This story was originally published September 18, 2020 at 2:57 PM with the headline "‘We haven’t had a good week’: Chris Klieman shares unsettling K-State COVID update."