Clemson Head Coach Monte Lee on COVID-19's Impact on Tiger Baseball

The COVID-19 pandemic recently canceled all ACC spring sports for the rest of the season, and with the announcement, Monte Lee's Clemson Tigers had their great start to the season put to an abrupt end.

The COVID-19 pandemic recently canceled all ACC spring sports for the rest of the season, and with the announcement, Monte Lee's Clemson Tigers had their great start to the season put to an abrupt end. 

But for Lee and the rest of the nation, his focus is not on wins and losses, but the safety of his players.

"These are challenging times for student athletes, coaches, for fans, and for our nation in general." Clemson baseball coach Monte Lee said. "This pandemic is changing our daily lives faster than we can even adjust to. For the time being for all of us, the safety of everybody is the primary concern and that's my primary concern for our student athletes. Its been a lot of adjustments and communication at this point in time as far as the appropriate steps that our student athletes need to take to try and keep themselves safe, and as we move through this spring break our primary focus starting next week becomes the transition onto online learning from home."

Coaches all across the country have been trying to figure out the next steps for their programs and their student-athletes.

"We don't know what the future looks like for us, we are just trying to keep this thing as simple as possible right now and really emphasize to the student athlete that their safety is our primary concern and their academics are our primary concern," Lee said. "That's been our biggest focus right now as we move forward."

Lee is making sure his team stays informed and on the same page with the rest of the program. 

"Since the guys left for spring break, we have been able to communicate with our guys the policies we are going to have in place at least until April 5, that's critical right now for us," Lee said. "Until further notice, their safety is our primary concern. Baseball players are creatures of habit and I've had communication with the whole team through our group messaging and I've had one on one conversations with guys because they have questions, and I've sent this information to their parents just so everybody is on the same page. Between now and April 5, we cannot use our facilities, coaches included. We can't go into the facilities, student athletes can't go into the facilities."

Safety is the biggest concern for Lee, keeping his players safe and healthy is his focus for this break.

"We are encouraging them to stay at home and practice social distancing to take all the measures to keep themselves safe," Lee said. "Washing their hands, not touching their face, just all the things we see on a national level to keep our guys from being exposed to this. We are trying to focus on that right now and that takes precedent over the day-in day-out routines of coaches"