ESPN: HelmetFitting.com founder Dana Marquez on safety during the 2020 football season
September 5th, 2020
HelmetFitting.com founder Dana Marquez was featured in ESPN’s September 4, 2020 article titled “How college football will look and function in this coronavirus season of change“. Dana discusses the new practices and procedures in place to keep Auburn University football players safe:
“Every student-manager and every player, whether they like to wear a glove or don’t like to wear a glove, is now wearing a glove,” Auburn equipment manager Dana Marquez said. “No human hands actually touch a ball except a quarterback. That’s different. Everybody is in a mask at practice. That’s different.”
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After Auburn practices, Marquez said the balls and ball bags will go into an ozone chamber to be sanitized. That bag will be filled and zipped shut until it returns to the field for the next practice. The Auburn equipment staff, like most across the country, has been working much longer hours during the pandemic. Take laundry. In the pre-pandemic era, a “load” — 10 machines washing the practice gear and towels after football practice — took 2½ hours to wash, dry, fold and distribute. This year, it takes 5½ hours.
“It seems like anything they touch, we have to wash,” Marquez said. “We called our laundry company and said, ‘Hey, we have to make sure all of our hoses have been replaced and we have to get ready to do a massive amount of laundry this year.'”
