With Dartmouth’s football offices closed the Big Green coaches, like the players, have scattered. Defensive line coach Duane Brooks is at his home in Maine for example. Offensive line coach Keith Clark is at his place on Cape Cod. Defensive coordinator Don Dobes is in New Jersey, where nickels coach Kyle Cavanaugh is holed up after his trip to Costa Rica was canceled.
BGA caught up with head coach Buddy Teevens at his second home in Florida where he put down his wood carving knife and picked up the phone long enough to offer some thoughts on his program in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s an edited version of his remarks:
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| Carving knife in hand. |
On escaping Hanover, where it snowed about six inches earlier in the week:
We’re in Florida, which is not a bad place to be quarantined, to be honest. We are trying to conduct business from afar. We've always talked about A&I, adjust and improvise, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re kind of masters of that with the stuff we’ve gone though with the weather in Hanover during the course of time.
On the most important thing, the health of his players, coaches and staff:
So far, so good. To the best of my knowledge we have nobody on staff or any players or families who have been affected or know people closely who have, but we know that can change.
On what the coaches have been doing:
They’ve been great. Technically, they have been on break for the last week-and-a-half. So to this point (the college shutdown) has coincided with separation times. As I said that to the coaches, “Enjoy your break. Take care of your families and we'll be right back at it.”
On how the coaches are going to get back to work when the college is closed and they are scattered about:
We'll have virtual staff meetings every morning. We'll have offensive and defensive meetings virtually each morning. We'll do our recruiting every afternoon. Once we determine what the academic requirements are for our players we’ll set up meeting times with them within the Ivy League rules.
On the familiarity of his staff with each other, the players and the program:
The consistency we have in our staff is going to be helpful. You look at like Mississippi State, which has a whole new coaching staff. They don't even know who the kids are. We’re fortunate in that regard, but still, it's a step into the unknown.
On “distance learning” for the players:
We'll have a team meeting, a special teams meeting, offensive and defensive unit meetings, positional meetings and do it all virtually. Some of (the coaches) are better technologically than others but we’ll work it out. We could have an entire entire team meeting, 100-plus kids and whatever the number of coaches is. The backgrounds of the meetings will vary from time to time, but we're going to try to keep the same protocol.”
On holding meetings with kids at home on the East Coast as well as others on the West Coast and making them work around classes:
We’re still waiting on class schedules because if there's an 8 a.m. class and a kid lives in California, that’s tough. We'll figure it all out with the time zones, find a common time and start to meet.
On what he hopes the players can learn in the meetings:
If we can at least enhance their knowledge positionally, and their awareness of offensive defensive and specialty schemes, that's a positive for us.
On how digital technology can help that:
(Director of football operations) Dino Cauteruccio and (recruiting director) Cody Keller have done a good job online. They’ve made sure all of our game footage, and all of our practice footage is available. Also our installation from a year ago. We have videotape on all that stuff and the preseason stuff, so we can go through the introductory type of things virtually with our players. The fact that we've been doing some of the Strivr (virtual reality) things before will help.
On how the players are strength training and conditioning off campus:
The challenge is access to weight equipment with our guys. The coaches have been in touch with them and we are telling them not to worry about it. Do the best you can. Have mom sit on your back and do push ups. Or have someone hold onto a towel and do curls. Strength coach Spencer Brown has done a nice job with a video of body weight exercises, push ups, pull ups, that type of thing. There are ways to maintain and then hopefully this thing abates at some point, and the guys will get back up to speed.
On one advantage Dartmouth might have because of the quarter system:
For us strength training it's not been that huge an adjustment because most of our kids are off during the winter quarter at some point during the career. They're gone. We do this stuff from a distance regularly, so they only have to continue with that.
On the fact that everyone in the Ivy League, in the FCS and in college football is in the same boat right now:
That’s my stress point with the guys. There's no advantage, no disadvantage. We're not having spring practice, well no one else in the country is. The thing right now is can you maintain your edge? My belief is to try to develop some level of normalcy, even though it's an abnormal situation.
On the possibility of the start of the season being delayed or the season canceled if the virus doesn’t subside to a significant degree:
There is conversation going on about postponing the start of the preseason or even the start of preseason. That's all hypothetical right now. Hopefully everything starts to fall off in July and August but there are no guarantees. I'm dealing with the what ifs. I mean, what if they cancel the preseason? With no spring practice will there be an extra two weeks of preseason? No, they're not going to do that. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't worry about it, because I can't change it. But I want to prepare for it.
On the chance that if the season is canceled in the fall it could be played in the spring:
Doing that on top of all the spring sports and organizational stuff? That would be a nightmare.
On the postponement of the team’s breakup banquet, originally scheduled for next week:
I feel for the seniors. We're not canceling it but we just don't know the timeframe for when we could have it. In a worst-case scenario, maybe we’ll have a smaller one with the seniors if there’s a graduation and the kids are coming back. It would be awkward to say just come on back for the banquet. Who knows if the college would allow us to do that anyway. I don't have a great plan for that one yet. I'm hoping we can do something to celebrate a super special year. I'd like to have the kids go out in style.
On the young players at the other end of the spectrum, those arriving in the late summer (hopefully) for their freshman year:
I'm trying to get an appeal through the Ivy League to allow access to incoming recruits, the class of young guys for next year. Those poor kids. They really are in limbo. A lot of them are two- or three-sport athletes and their spring season is shot. Their schools are shut down. They probably won’t have graduation. And who's advising them? They don't have access to their strength coaches and because they're graduating and how much time would those coaches really spend with them? But the NCAA doesn't allow us to interact with those kids, because technically they are not part of our program yet. Well, they're sitting at home. From a mental health standpoint, and a stability standpoint, my request is to let them join in on meetings. It’s not gonna make a whole lot of sense to them anyway. But they can get some support and start to know some of their peers. They can hear a little bit and it's not a lengthy period of time, two hours a week, so they start connecting and feel a part of it.
On a possible bright side of a dark situation:
I'm old school but the one thing that this has generated in my mind is we're getting a lot of work done virtually. Do we have to do it the way it always has been in the past, when you are chained to your desk? Could I do something a little bit different where I give the guys a Monday or Friday off, maybe have the offensive staff in on Monday, and defensive staff on Friday. Maybe get the guys out and function a little bit more independently.
On where this falls among the challenges he’s faced in his long coaching career:
It’s not just coaching. It’s in my lifetime we've never heard anything like this. I talked to my mom and she mentioned the polio scare back in the ‘50s. She said it was different because nobody knew anything and you couldn't communicate. Right now the news is 24/7 and everybody has an opinion. Now you don’t know what to believe other than it’s not going away quickly.
On how, as someone not given to standing still, he has dealt personally with staying at home, albeit not far from the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean:
For me a lockdown would be a hard thing to deal with. I'm trying to get in some workouts. I go ride my bike. They shut down all the parking at the beach, which eliminated about 75 percent of the beach attendance, which is good. Prior to that, it was like holy crap. I've tried to be somewhat self-sustaining and have been doing a little bit of fishing but I think the fish are practicing social distancing as well. I haven't caught a fish since I've been out.
