MADISON, Wis. - Monday marks the first day in a step toward normalcy for University of Wisconsin fall athletes, as they are being permitted to return to campus to begin voluntary workouts.

One of the more interested onlookers to see how the process goes will be men’s basketball coach Greg Gard, as the transition’s success or failure will play a determining factor in when his players can start getting back to work.

“The safety of our student-athletes is priority number one,” Gard told BadgerBlitz.com last week. “How they are going to do it, it’s going to be tiered. It’s going to be very strategic and organized as teams return. Just like we’ve learned so much in the last 2-3 months about COVID-19 and all the things it involves, we’re going to continue to learn over the next few weeks as we try to integrate teams back together.”

The NCAA Division I Council announced on May 21 that football and basketball athletes would be allowed to work out on campuses starting June 1, ending a freeze on athletic activities in those sports.

Wisconsin hasn’t released details of how the workouts will be conducted and how/if players will be tested for the coronavirus, but head coach Paul Chryst said in a video call last week that the first phase of workouts will be small groups in the weight room under the supervision of strength and conditioning coaches (who aren’t permitted to run the workouts).

The Southeastern Conference – which is allowing football and basketball players back on campus today – established a task force to prepare a series of best practices for screening, testing, monitoring, tracing, social distancing and maintaining clean environments. The recommendations included the screening of athletes before and after they arrive on campus and testing of symptomatic team members.

“At this time, we are preparing to begin the fall sports season as currently scheduled, and this limited resumption of voluntary athletic activities on June 8 is an important initial step in that process,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement.

Gard hasn’t been around his team since the middle of March, having a team meeting addressing the cancelation of the Big Ten basketball tournament and preparing his group for the possible cancelation of the NCAA tournament, which came later that day. Several college and professional sports have been postponed or canceled since that time and college athletic facilities have been shuttered.

The main means of communication has been through text, calls and video chats to make sure everybody stayed on top of their assignments. The result was the team finishing with its highest collective second-semester grade point average in more than 20 years.

That’s part of the reason why Gard isn’t panicked about lost time with a season set to open in more than five months. Having seen his group overcome tremendous season-long adversity to win its final eight seasons, culminating with a road victory at Indiana to clinch a share of the Big Ten regular season title, Gard is slated to return all five starters and multiple role players who, he described, developed their own level of leadership.

“How we were at the end of the year and combined with what we have back and what it incoming, expectations are really high,” Gard said. “You’re going to have a spotlight; we’re going to be on center stage with high-level games against high-level competition. There’s expectations they’ve earned the right to be a part of and the attention they are getting.”

A group Gard describes as “antsy” to get back to work, a sign that there is genuine care and desire to be around one other, his players are hopeful that the results of the next few weeks will brighten the light at the end of the tunnel and allow them back into the gym together.

“There’s been so much more personal accountability and responsibility to make sure they are staying in step with what needs to be done,” Gard said. “They understand what it looks like and feels like and how their body bodies need to be for our championship culture … They’ve handled all this adversity and the changes that happened academically with flying colors.”