By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.comhttps://virginiasports.com/staff/carla-williams/
CHARLOTTESVILLE –– This is an unprecedented time for college athletics, as Carla Williams knows well. She’s steering the University of Virginia athletics department as it navigates the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down college sports in March.
Williams has been working closely with University president Jim Ryan and many others at the state and local levels to determine when and if UVA teams will be able to compete in 2020-21. Head football coach Bronco Mendenhall’s players returned to Grounds last weekend, and the student-athletes from Virginia’s other fall teams are scheduled to return later this month.
In a Zoom conversation with VirginiaSports.com, Williams addressed numerous topics, including the pandemic’s effect on her department and the status of the Master Plan. The interview follows:
The pandemic has changed life as we know it in the United States. What have the past four months been like for you personally and professionally?
Williams: “Personally, it’s been a roller coaster because of all the uncertainty. When you have children and there’s what feels like a national emergency, you want to put your hands on them, you want to see them. We were able to do that, and we’re so thankful that all three of our children are healthy and safe. So that part of it was scary, because the environment just changes so often and there’s so much uncertainty. I just decided I couldn’t worry about it every minute of the day. I still worry about it, but not every minute of the day. So we talk a lot by phone with our [two] daughters. Our son is great. He’s doing fine and is healthy and working out a little bit, getting ready for high school football. And my husband’s been as busy as me on Zoom calls and meetings and what not. We’re thankful that we’re healthy and don’t have any issue right now, and hopefully we won’t have any.
“Professionally, none of us athletic directors or commissioners or administrators or coaches have ever experienced anything like this. But when you have had challenges and adversity in your career, those times have really helped me. I’ve moved around, having been at Georgia twice and Vanderbilt and Florida State, and when you do that you experience a lot of different things, a lot of different challenges, challenges that are unique to certain places, and you meet new coaches and student-athletes and you have an opportunity to experience different things and learn from different people. I feel prepared for this challenge. Even with all of the uncertainty and all of the unknowns, I’m very fortunate, because we’ve got great coaches, and we’ve got a great staff, and everyone’s pulled together and kind of risen to the challenge. That part has been fun, just watching people grow and mature. And then for me, just being able to be forced to think differently and to think about different things, to think about the unusual, that’s been exciting, too.”
In addition to the pandemic, the U.S. has been grappling with social unrest in recent months. This is a unique time in the nation’s history. How you have processed all this?
Williams: “People will sometimes say to me, ‘There’s so much going on. It’s so much. There’s too much going on at one time.’ I really don’t look at it that way. I look at everything that’s happening––the pandemic, the social-justice movement, us trying to figure out how to return to sports, the [COVID-19] numbers going in the wrong direction––and I believe that things happen for a reason. They’re all happening at the same time for a reason.
“We were separated physically from our student-athletes, and we were forced to use Zoom, we were forced to use technology to connect, and we were doing that. And then everything else happened in our community, in our country, related to social justice, and it gave us another opportunity to have even more meaningful connections to our student-athletes. This situation was primed for there to be a disconnect between coaches, staff, administrators, student-athletes, but ironically because of everything that’s happened [recently], we’re actually closer, I believe. There’s been more interaction and more connection, more substantive conversations, which I think has been really helpful.”
There’s been extensive collaboration among ACC schools, administrators and coaches as they try to deal with the challenges brought on by the pandemic. How do you think that’s gone?
Williams: “I think it’s been great. We’ve been meeting twice a week as athletic directors for the conference, and then we’ve got several subcommittees. In actuality, I’m probably meeting daily with another athletic director in the conference. I love people-watching, and I love to see how people respond to adversity. It’s been a lot of fun watching leaders step up to the plate and respond during times of adversity. It’s been challenging for all of us, because we’re trying to do what’s best for the conference, and we’re also trying to do what’s best for our individual schools and our student-athletes, and then we’re also obviously mindful of what the NCAA’s role is in all of this. I love to learn, and it’s been a learning process for me just to be able to watch and give input and be a part of figuring out what to do during a pandemic with college athletics.”
Members of the football team returned to Grounds last Sunday. How much have you leaned on the UVA Health System in determining a schedule for the return of student-athletes?
Williams: “The UVA Health System has been phenomenal. Our doctors have been amazing, and we have been meeting basically daily for several months, planning to return and trying to get a protocol in place and trying to determine when we should return. And I could just go on and on. Doctor [John] MacKnight, Kelli Pugh, Ethan Saliba, Mitch Rosner, Pat Lampkin, J.J. Davis, Liz Magill. There have been so many people from the University [involved], and it’s been a total team effort, because it had to be. When you’re dealing with a public health issue and the University is closed, returning to athletics during something like that has to be a total team effort [involving] a lot of people from the University, from the UVA Health System, from the Virginia Department of Health. We’ve been working with so many different people in the Commonwealth to be able to start to return to sports. And I can’t say enough about our sports medicine staff and the work that they’ve done to plan, to put policies in place and protocols in place. And then to see those executed, starting on Monday, was amazing.”
How have UVA student-athletes been involved in establishing some of these protocols and guidelines? What are their thoughts on competing in 2020-21?
Williams: “The ACC asked us to nominate reps from men’s basketball, women’s basketball, football and the Olympic sports, so that the conference could [hear from] all of those student-athletes from those different teams to get their feedback about returning. The conference did a really good job of pulling the student-athletes together and getting their feedback and then sharing that feedback with us. I met with our fall student-athletes beforehand, so they had a good understanding of what we were thinking as an institution.
“So that was really good, and we’ve been meeting with the student-athletes on a regular basis. I’ve met with several of our student-athlete groups, and [UVA athletics administrators] Ted White and Jess Wilk meet with them on a regular basis to keep them informed. They are excited to come back, they are excited to be with their teammates and coaches and doing something that’s familiar to them, but they also are asking the right questions about their safety and testing, which is really encouraging. We want our student-athletes to be inquisitive about their own health and well-being, and they have been. The football players are excited to be back on Grounds. The coaches are excited to have them back. I was there on Monday when they were doing the testing, and you could just feel the buzz and excitement in the air. There’s a nervousness, too, because there are just so many unknowns. Everybody feels good about football and what needs to happen with football, but there are unknowns related to the virus that cause consternation.”
How much communication have you had with the parents of UVA student-athletes? What’s the response from them been?
Williams: “Communicating with the student-athletes and their parents is really important during times like this when there’s a public health crisis. Bronco and I met with the football team [one] night, and then the next night we met with their parents over Zoom, to talk through everything and give the parents an opportunity to ask questions. Bronco and I are both big believers in transparency, and the parents told us they were very thankful for the information, the openness, the transparency.
“When you’re a parent and there’s a public health issue that could impact your child, you want information, even though you know there are things that you can’t control. You want to know what the plan is. We just felt like it was very important to make sure the parents were informed. We’ve had a meeting with student-athletes and parents for every fall sport. We’ve made sure that the parents had every opportunity to ask questions so that they could be as informed as we are, because things have been changing so quickly.”