‘It absolutely floored me’: USC’s Frank Martin reveals he had COVID-19
South Carolina men’s basketball coach Frank Martin admitted he could’ve handled that moment better.
Riding on an exercise bike in his home in early May, he got a call. He’d taken a COVID-19 test ahead of a planned knee replacement, but he wasn’t worried about it. His family had taken precaution, even going through the natural tensions of keeping his 21-year-old son in the house.
And then that call delivered the news Martin had tested positive.
“It absolutely floored me,” Martin said. “I probably handled it wrong with my family.
“My wife happened to be walking out and I told her, and I walked into the house and my kids were eating lunch and I just laid it on them, like, we’re talking about going to the park. And so I freaked everybody out, which compounded the whole problem, but I was freaked out. I couldn’t believe it.”
He publicly announced the positive test on Tuesday afternoon in a written statement, and then spoke about it a few hours later with reporters.
He said the most unnerving thing was he isn’t even sure how he contracted it. His family had mostly stayed away from people, limiting trips outside the house for things like groceries (he did play some golf with former Gamecocks coach Eddie Fogler).
He called it unsettling because the last thing on his mind when he got tested was that it might come up positive.
That news came May 8. Martin said he didn’t have any symptoms. He also said he has had two negative tests since and no one in his immediate family tested positive.
Going through his test and quarantine impacted the way he looked back on the past few months and the prospect of restarting the team.
He reminisced about being at the SEC basketball tournament, a trip his team made and then returned from without playing after the coronavirus pandemic shut down sports. At the time he worried about potentially even playing at that event.
Concerns remain in terms of long-term effects with a still somewhat new illness, and that fed into the team coming back at the end of June rather than the beginning.
“I‘d rather wait,” Martin said. “Football, God bless them. They’ve jumped into this both feet in — the players are excited, the coaches are excited. (Athletic director) Ray Tanner, the leadership of a campus, president (Robert L.) Caslen, they’ve done an unbelievable job on creating a plan to make this safe.”
He worried about the potential of a player getting infected on campus and potentially returning home and infecting others.
As his concern for his own condition waned, Martin joked he now gets to turn to being worried again about the knee replacement procedure scheduled for later this week.
“My spirits are back up,” Martin said. “God helped me, and guided me and kept my family negative. And it allowed me to get to this place without any of those crazy symptoms, but psychologically, it’s a burden, and it’s a uncomfortable burden. But I feel good right now.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2020 at 1:27 PM.
