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By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE –– The University of Virginia’s colors are blue and orange, but head football coach Bronco Mendenhall would love to see all of his players in black.
That’s the color of the workout gear awarded to the top performers in the strength and conditioning program that Shawn Griswold oversees. As the Cavaliers prepare to open preseason practice this evening, they’re bigger, stronger and faster than they were at this time last summer.
In judging the Wahoos’ talent level, Mendenhall said, the “snapshot is always how many players on our team are in color.”
The workout gear each UVA player wears corresponds to the level he has achieved in Griswold’s program. Players start at white and, based on how they perform in testing similar to that used at the NFL scouting combine, can earn promotions to gray, to orange, to blue and, finally, to black.
“It’s an earned-not-given program,” said Griswold, who was hired in January 2018 as Virginia’s director of football development and performance.
Heading into training camp last year, the Hoos had two players in black: Juan Thornhill and Jordan Ellis, who were seniors. Virginia will open practice this evening with six in black: Bryce Perkins, Richard Burney, PK Kier, Jordan Mack, Nick Grant and Joe Reed.
At this time last summer, seven players were in blue. Twelve months later, the total is 14: Darrius Bratton, Bryce Hall, Chris Moore, Noah Taylor, Lamont Atkins, De’Vante Cross, Mandy Alonso, Terrell Chatman, Hasise Dubois, Nash Griffin, Eli Hanback, Terrell Jana, Charles Snowden and Wayne Taulapapa.
Eli Hanback (in orange) and Richard Burney (right)
At the start of training camp last year, five players were in orange. The number this summer is 17.
“It’s really driving the training,” Griswold said of the players’ desire to climb the color ladder.
The staff tests players’ speed, strength and agility, “and then we take an average of their scores,” Griswold said Every player has a performance card in his locker, so he knows what’s required to move up a level.
“As Coach Mendenhall always says, feedback is a gift, so the constant feedback is right there in their face, and they know exactly where they sit,” Griswold said.
Last Friday, on the final day of the offseason strength and conditioning program, the Cavaliers’ offensive players gathered around Griswold in the McCue Center weight room. It was a little past 6:30 a.m.
“What do you gotta get to get black?” Griswold asked Reed, a senior wide receiver and return specialist.
“Nineteen,” Reed answered, and a few minutes later, to his teammates’ delight, he bench-pressed 225 pounds 20 times to join the men in black.
“It comes down to the last moment of the last day, and that’s kind of how it works, right?” Griswold said. “And that’s kind of how the [Coastal Division race] is going to come down. It’s going to probably come down to the last game. So for him to motivate and do that was pretty awesome to see.”
Among the players who earned orange gear this summer were the three freshmen who enrolled at UVA in January and started in white: defensive backs Chayce Chalmers and Antonio Clary and wide receiver Dorien Goddard.
“It’s really, really helped those three kids to be here early, and there will be some more guys in [orange],” Griswold said, noting that offensive linemen Bobby Haskins and Dillon Reinkensmeyer are coming back from injuries that limited their offseason training.
The rest of the Cavaliers’ first-year class arrived in early June for the second session of summer school. In each of Mendenhall’s first three years at UVA, the bulk of the freshman class did not get to Charlottesville until July, for the final session of summer school.
The team’s veterans trained in the mornings during the week, the freshmen in the afternoons.
“When you think about [the extra] seven weeks, that’s an entire offseason they just got,” Griswold said. “Coach asked how I liked [the new training schedule]. I said, ‘I love it.’ It’s more work for [the staff], because we have more people here trying to get ready, but we make the freshmen their own group, which is good.”
Last summer, the strength and conditioning staff had less than a month to work with the newcomers before training camp started.
“That’s not training, that’s teaching,” Griswold said. “We barely got anything done. Then you get to in-season, and it’s hard for [the freshmen] to manage all the time-management stuff. You can’t train like that. So you don’t really get a training session until the next January.
“So when you think about this class and where they’ll be [next year] March, we’re a full training session ahead. And then you’re building character and culture and habits, and we’re mentoring them and teaching them to sleep and eat [properly] and where to be.”
One of the freshmen, linebacker Nick Jackson, moved from white to orange over the seven-week period. Overall, Griswold said, the newcomers have tremendous promise.
“It’s a unique group,” he said. “They truly like each other, too, and they help each other and the energy’s been really good. So from top to bottom, that’s a really good class.”
PK Kier
Griswold, a former tight end at Utah State, spent six seasons as Arizona State’s head coach for sports performance before coming to UVA. He’s also run the strength and conditioning programs for football at Pitt, Tulsa and Utah State, from which he earned two degrees.
The culture at Virginia is different, Griswold said, “and I don’t just say that to say that. It sounds like coachspeak, but I’ve been a lot of places in 24 years, and these guys truly like one another and they love one another and take care of one another.”
During bench-press testing last week, Griswold said, the players “got as excited for [long-snapper] Lee Dudley to get one rep at 225 as they did for somebody else to get 30. I had to turn around and say, ‘What the hell’s all that noise?’ It was Dudley getting one rep, and he got the most he’s ever gotten.”
He’s pleased with the players’ gains in the weight room but knows the “strength stuff takes time,” Griswold said. “You can’t build strength overnight. That’s just not how the human body works.”
The added strength will help the Cavaliers be “physical and practice hard and play hard and hopefully dominate the line of scrimmage,” Griswold said. “But what I also want it to parlay into is fewer missed starts. When I was at Arizona State and at Tulsa, according to some of the research, we were top five, top six, top seven in the country in fewest missed starts.
“There were a lot of years at Arizona State where we had two corners and two safeties and a nickel guy, and those dudes played every game. On the O-line, we [rotated] five or six guys, and those guys played every single game. And that leads to continuity. When you’re constantly having to juggle guys back and forth around on the offensive line, it’s just really, really difficult on the kids and the coaching staff.
“What I want to see is fewer missed practices, fewer missed games and fewer surgeries at the end of the season. That’s a personal goal of my own.”