Tennessee returned to the practice field on Saturday evening following the cancellation of Friday’s practice due to positive COVID-19 tests within the program.
Tennessee Athletics Communications informed the media Saturday evening that the Vols were back on the practice field. A few moments later, the official Tennessee Football twitter account sent out a tweet of the Vols back at practice for the seventh time this fall camp.
4️⃣ weeks from the real deal pic.twitter.com/IPILcB50Qm
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) August 29, 2020
Vols head coach Jeremy Pruitt informed the media during a media availability on Friday afternoon that he had made the decision to cancel practice.
‘This week we had a few more positive tests,” Pruitt said. “So I elected to shut practice down. We re-tested everybody this morning to see where we’re at. Our No. 1 priority here is to be able to protect everybody associated with our program. That’s what we’re going to continue to do.
“And as we get the results back we’ll see exactly where we’re at and we’ll start practice up accordingly.”
Tennessee did not comment on the results of the re-testing from Friday morning, but the fact that the Vols were back at practice on Saturday evening indicates that it went well enough to where Pruitt felt comfortable getting his team back out on the practice field.
“If there’s been any spread, it’s been whether it’s in somebody’s apartment or somebody’s dorm room,” Pruitt said. “That’s one of the things that we’ve been able to kind of figure out. With this time, we just wanted to take a day or two to go back and make sure we’re very thorough with each one of our players. And figure out where the initial COVID came from.
“When you start trying to go back and figure it out, the first thing is it takes a lot of communication. You want to make sure that it’s not being transmitted within our building, first and foremost. So just going back and gathering information and figuring out. So that’s something that we’ve done the last 48 hours and we’ll continue to do that.”
Tennessee is scheduled to begin its 2020 season on Sept. 26 against South Carolina on the road in Colombia. Following their Week 1 contest with the Gamecocks, the Vols will return home to face Missouri in their home-opener on Oct. 3.
