Editor’s Note: I had a chance to catch up with UVa’s director of football development & performance Shawn Griswold on Thursday. Now in his third year in Charlottesville, the California native is tackling an even bigger challenge than the one he had when he arrived, and it’s certainly going to be the strangest offseason in the 23 years he’s been on the job.

In the first part of this Q&A, Griswold talks about the offseason work players completed prior to being forced off Grounds, the challenges of continuing the offseason program with guys spread out across the country, and the solutions he and his staff were able to come up with in an effort to keep everyone moving forward.

Wow. That’s a really good way to frame it.

Yeah, they had done really well. Talking about January, playing in the championship game after winning the Coastal then playing in the Orange Bowl. That's a long season and we had prepared for that—both through my staff and through athletic training and then the coaching staff, obviously—for the long haul. It's kind of what we're built for. And then we got back in January, trained really hard, had some state changes, guys are making some good progress, certain guys getting back to full speed as they were coming off surgeries, heading spring break feeling good. So I was really pleased with the winter, everything went according to plan, and we made some great changes. So, I was really happy with that.

Yeah, I mean, it's obviously a very unique setup and system. Kind of like Coach [Bronco Mendenhall] always says, the fastest ones to figure it out are the ones that are most successful and the ones that adapt the fastest. I think most people that probably know me know that "Any challenge" is kind of always been my motto since I started doing this in 1997, it's actually tattooed on my forearm and part of my arms and that kind of stuff. So, I just leaned on my staff. I have an unbelievable staff in DC (Dwyane Chandler), Tyler (Shumate), Nate (Pototschnik) and then Ryan was here at the time. I mean, I have unbelievable dudes. And we got together at Bronco’s pool house and we had two huge grease boards, both sides filled up of ideas and how do we work through it and get to it. And so we came in and worked. Nate came up with the Russian strength stuff for the guys that didn't have any equipment. We had bodyweight squat stuff. We had some guys still here then too still doing regular workouts. We still had guys that had access to everything. So we were sending out very customized programs to everybody. And then we kind of knew, as you kind of proceeded and listened to the news, you might have thought well maybe this isn't gonna last very long like this. So, they did a good job of reframing that and doing some different workouts for guys with what we call the athlete kit where, Carla (Williams) and Bronco were so gracious enough to provide that to our athletes. We were able to send them out an athlete kit with a med ball and a band and a kettlebell. So, my guys did an awesome job of designing that, then still pumping out our “Pride Fridays” and making those things extremely difficult. And to be honest with you, it all starts with our head coach and the fact that he constantly on Zoom calls talked about the longer it goes, the stronger we could get, and just the culture of our guys knowing that they're going to need to work when they're home—that was the expectation—so that when we do get back to Grounds we're going to kind of try to hit the ground running as fast as possible within the reference of knowing that they haven't been around us. There were going to be different varying degrees of where they were going to be in shape. But that set us apart, I think. Our culture is different. I'm pretty pleased where we're at right now, especially after the weeks being gone and being back for about two and a half now. I’m pretty happy with that. My guys, again, they do a good job of adapting. Coach Shumate wrote a specific plan for guys like Hayden Mitchell, who had this set of dumbbells that go up to this. So it got down to as grimy as it can get to as good as it can get, where (Charles) Snowden is able to train with Jahmeer Carter some days at his full gym. Joe Bissinger had a full gym. So, yeah, it was as grimy as you can get to as glamorous as you can get. We just tried to be as specific as possible and I think my staff was just unbelievable at putting it together thinking through how do we make it work for these kids. It's always kind of our thing, not that we can't but just how do we do it? And so, I’m really happy with that whole process.

Yeah, right?! Yeah, it was pretty funny because most of them ended up with quite a bit of stuff. I mean, Elliott Brown texted me ‘Hey can I have the full workout because I’ve got this and this now.’ Richard Burney is out in his front yard with metal plates doing power cleans in his grass. It was insane. (Zane) Zandier had a bunch. (Josh) Ahern had a bunch. Nick Jackson had a bunch. So it was pretty funny. The guys were pretty resilient in finding pieces of equipment and places to go. So that part of it made it interesting. But again, you had to customize to what they have. Some guys had cinderblocks and some guys didn’t. TJ Kitts was out there squatting a baby calf. So, it is what it is.

Yeah, I was pretty confident in our guys to be honest. I mean, if I had to bet on anybody I would be on our own, right? From our culture, from the head man down to our coordinators, our position coaches, down to myself and my staff, I mean, the expectation and the culture is what it is. They know that work is work and that you have to work to be better. So, did I think they'd be where they were when we first got back? They exceeded my expectations because you just didn't know what guys had so they could try to squat, clean, have they even been able to get out and run because certain places in the country you couldn't go on a field to run. So, we tried to really design it the best we could so that everybody would make those gains. Our guys would help us get out these mass emails on Sunday. ‘This guy's getting this, this guy's getting that’ and then you add all the first-years in May and this workout is just for them. It was very customized the best we could to what you have and a lot of conversations on the side with the players texting, either that or FaceTiming, too. I FaceTimed Shawn Smith one time, he was at his aunt's and he found some stuff in the basement and was like ‘Well, I can't do this in the basement because the ceiling’s low. So what can I do?’ Same thing with Dontayvion Wicks. ‘I don't have this. Okay, fill a backpack up full of books or, you know, jugs of sand.’ You just had to try to figure it out as best you could. And then we got them the athlete kits. So, at that point, then we knew that everybody had at least something. So we could send the same Pride Friday to do. Bottom line, we knew if they were doing the work, we knew they'd come back with at least a decent baseline. And again, we've run really hard the last two weeks and I'm really pleased with where they're at.

Yeah, I mean, obviously in the wintertime, you’re talking strength gains, power gains, and body mass changes, whether it's getting bigger or leaning out, those kind of things. So you identify those guys and what part of the roster you’re young at, what part you have older guys at. If you look at our team right now…we’re based on a color scheme, right? So we all know that the black is the highest and then blue, and then orange, and then gray. And so we needed to make some changes so we got some guys to move [up]. The numbers do matter and typically for us, at a pretty high rate, it's spitting out our best players. So the Juan Thornhills, the Joe Reeds, the Bryce Perkins’ and Bryce Halls. They're getting invited to the Combine, they're getting drafted, they're making rosters. So, we know that the higher you are in that kind of stuff with the training the better player you’re going to be. So those are key components and they drive our training. So, you know, just Elliot Brown moved to orange, which is great. We all know he can play really well and has a high upside. Joe Bissinger went to blue, Chris Glaser went to blue, Ryan Swaboda went to blue, Matt Gahm went to blue, Zane went to blue, Snow’s in blue. So we've got a lot on that side…De’Vante Cross is in blue, Nino [Nick Grant] is in black. So, we’ve got a lot of guys that are staring to move colors, which, again, has produced our best players. And so we’ve got to keep making those strides and those changes to all of our guys. Each year is a different kind of evaluation. What do you lose and where are you at? Are you super young, you're not very strong? And that's a constant evaluation, constant topic of discussion between Coach and I and then me and my staff as well.

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