Sports and activities are canceled, grocery stores are running low on items, and people are being encouraged to stay home. In Beresford, however, Legends of Gold, a wrestling club that trains and works with wrestlers from the youth level to senior-level Olympians, has stayed open.
It’s not as simple as that though, and if a person were to see the daily operations of Legends of Gold today, it would look quite different than it does normally.
“Our camps normally have people from 17 to 18 states and they range anywhere between 100 and 150 people a session,” said Legends of Gold Wrestling CEO Terry Pack. “So obviously we're at a point now where that's not feasible to put 100 people in the room and 100 people coming in from different counties and states and towns.”
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic that is sweeping the nation, Legends of Gold is still running camps, but they’re nowhere close to the number that they normally would be. Additionally, the camps they are running keep the athletes at the facility through the duration of each session.
“What we've done now is we've limited all those contact groups to 10 or less and there's a pretty rigorous protocol for kids to come and we lock them down and they're not able to go out in the community,” explained Pack. “We do all the training in that small group of 10 or less, which is our city ordinance, and just try to get by the best we can offering some of these kids some hope that normal is going to return someday.”
If a kid is healthy and passes the protocol questionnaire to be able to attend a session, Legends of Gold is asking them to then self-quarantine for a full two weeks before the session begins. And at any sign of illness, even just a nagging cough, a person won’t be allowed in.
Legends of Gold has also worked with the city of Beresford to ensure they are within the proper guidelines to stay open, which is no more than ten people, and cleaning buildings, mats, and equipment used on daily basis.
The location of Legends of Gold is key. If they were in the state of Iowa, for instance, they’d be forced to close at the present time. Iowa is currently operating under a shelter-in order, which means only essential businesses can remain open. Because South Dakota does not have a shelter-in order in place, businesses are allowed to stay open, but with minimum numbers of people.
Organization CEO Terry Pack acknowledges that there has been some disagreement to Legends of Gold staying open.
“Obviously not everybody agrees that having even sport people here is something that we should be doing,” state Pack. “So I don't think you're ever going to get everybody on board to agree with it at all. I just think that as long as this is what the county and the state and the city allow us to do that we're going to operate within those guidelines.”
Legends of Gold isn’t even allowing parents to come in when they drop off their kids. And if a kid does leave campus at any point during a session, they’re not allowed back in.
“We have them shower before and after practices. We sanitize nightly with the fumigation machines in any building that we use, and then we ozone that same building that night,” explained Pack. “We're trying to take every precaution possible to eliminate any contamination, but I think the safest thing that we're doing is not allowing outside contact and being very rigorous with our questionnaires.”