Dothan Wolves basketball coach Janasky Fleming back to work after bout with COVID-19

Fleming last coached the team against Prattville on Jan. 12 and began feeling bad the next day. When he returned home from a practice session and grabbed a blanket before sitting down, Fleming’s wife could tell something was wrong.

“She said, ‘Oh no, there’s something wrong with you,’ because I never do stuff like that,” Fleming said. “I usually come home and watch some Hudl videos, or I just do something.”

The coach tested positive the next day for coronavirus. In Fleming’s absence, junior varsity coach O’darius Bryant took over the role as interim head coach, with the help of assistants Michael Miller and Sedric Martin, though Martin also had to quarantine for a week.

“When I got tested positive, they went back and watched the video to see who I was around and one of the assistants, Sedric Martin, he actually had to quarantine from being around me the most,” Fleming said. “He tested negative and was able to come back about a week before me.”

While at home, Fleming kept contact with the coaches the best he could through a group chat.

“I’m not going to lie, I was feeling so bad it took a job just to sit down and read it sometimes, you know?” Fleming said.

Fleming described his symptoms as more like the flu with high temperatures.

“I kept checking my temperature, and most mornings it was 104, or 103,” Fleming said of the early stages. “I thought, ‘Something must be wrong with this thing (thermometer).’ I thought, ‘It can’t be that.’ Then I would sit for a while and think, ‘No, it probably is.’”

Spending time mostly in an upstairs bedroom away from his wife and daughter, both of who also quarantined, Fleming said it was a chore just to move around.

“Tamika (wife) would make stuff and bring it upstairs and sit it at the door,” Fleming said. “For the first time in my life, I remember looking at my phone and seeing maybe it was 6:30 a.m. and with her knocking on the door saying she sat something there and then I would sit and think about getting up to eat. By the time I would get up to get it, it would be like 7:15 – 45 minutes would have been gone.

“Decisions are like 30 minutes – do I really want to do this; do I really want to get up? The fever and the body aches. That kind of almost took me over the top.”

Fleming doesn’t hesitate to say there were times he was afraid when the temperature spiked.

“When I kept checking my temperature for those three days in a row and it kept saying like 103, 104 – that scared me,” Fleming said. “It made me just drink water. I’m not a huge water drinker, but I know from drinking a lot of water and being able to go to the bathroom, I felt like that helped me so much.

“I started to go sit outside every day. It was a sunny stretch, so you go sit outside with the vitamin D – you just want to sit out there and get some sun rays in.

“When I would walk back in and walk upstairs with that mask on and everything, the breathing was a real issue. When I would go outside I would try to walk around a little bit, but I would always end up flopping down.”

Fleming returned to school on Monday and was with the team for a practice session.

“I went but I just sat and let them do it,” Fleming said of letting his assistants run the practice session,” Fleming said. “Three or four times I went in the office and just took it (mask) off and just sat down.”

The team went 1-3 during Fleming’s absence, losing consecutive games to Central-Phenix City, Jeff Davis and Enterprise before beating Eufaula this past Saturday.

Fleming said he could tell an improvement from Monday to Tuesday and was expected to coach the team in a game at Prattville on Tuesday night.