Jason Southard was working in the sports information department at Southern Connecticut State University when then-Southern athletic director, former Detroit Lions head coach Darryl Rogers, got a phone call.

It was then-Coast Guard Academy athletic director Chuck Mills, former assistant coach for the Kansas City Chiefs, looking to hire someone to lead his own sports information division.

"He said, 'I need a guy who can run the (bleeping) football press box,'" Southard said of the always colorful Mills. "So two former NFL guys helped me get the Coast Guard job.

"Chuck told everyone, there's an intramural basketball team there," said Southard, who is 6-foot-9. "He told everyone, 'I brought him in to be the intramural star. I didn't know he was the 6-9 clunk.'"

Southard is now in his 25th year at Coast Guard, promoted to assistant athletic director for media relations in 2018. He runs the football press box at Coast Guard's Cadet Memorial Field and attends to approximately 10,000 other details, fielding the requests from coaches who want media attention and from members of the media who want coaches' attention. He does so seamlessly.

Currently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Southard is working from his porch in Uncasville, assigning the numbers for the 2020 football roster from that exact location recently.

And he's not the only SID who's working for the home team.

In New London, there are three colleges which compete at the Division III level. In addition to Coast Guard, there are Connecticut College and Mitchell College.

The three sports information directors speak to each other occasionally, more often when the teams face each other or if one school is serving as a league or NCAA tournament venue and the home SID could use some help keeping statistics.

David Longolucco is in his 11th year at Mitchell College, arriving back in the region after serving as sports information director at the University of Hartford, a Division I program, for seven years. Longolucco and his wife Marisa are both Stonington High School graduates and have two sons, 13-year-old Andrew and 3-year-old Adam. They live in Pawcatuck.

"(At Hartford) there were a lot of hours and a lot of travel," he said. "Here, the hours are not any less, but the only time I travel is during the postseason. It's a good situation for a family and young kids. That was a huge draw for me.

"Mitchell itself has been great. I have the ability to know all the athletes. I still know the names and the faces, interacting on a day-to-day basis. The wins are just as sweet (as they are in Division I) and the losses are just as tough."

Matt Chmura is in his third year as the sports information contact at Connecticut College, previously working at Widener University in Chester, Pa. A graduate of Acton-Boxborough Regional High School in Massachusetts, he also returned to his New England roots with the move to Conn College. His home office is currently located in Groton.

Chmura gives the rundown on what the life of a sports information guru looks like at this time.

Without any actual games over which to preside, Southard, Longolucco and Chmura have spent time paying tribute to each program's athletes, some of whom who saw their winter seasons end while on the cusp of NCAA tournament appearances — the Division III NCAA tournaments were to begin the next day in track and wrestling.

"I've been very busy," Chmura said this week in a telephone interview. "It's very unfortunate everything that's happened. For this time frame, we were expecting to have games. This has been an opportunity to think outside the box, to do things to promote our athletic department in different ways. At the beginning, we met and we came up with a communication plan.

"We keep everyone engaged, from student-athletes to alumni. We've been executing it."

Chmura, who takes care of all 28 sports at Conn, has been posting different content on the Connecticut College athletics web site — camelathletics.com — each day. On Wednesday, there was a story about three members of the women's water polo team who earned All-America honors from the Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches. Conn has also produced a feature called "Camel Coaching Spotlight," introducing the school's various head coaches.

On April 15, the Mitchell College Web page — mitchellathletics.com — featured a story about the Mariners' Student-Athlete Advisory Committee taking control of the New England Collegiate Conference Instagram account as part of the Hope Happens Here campaign, which raises mental health awareness.

Coast Guard's most recent press release on its page — uscgasports.com — is in regard to four members of the women's lacrosse team who have earned New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference All-Academic honors.

Of course, all three New London colleges have paid tribute to their outgoing seniors.

Southard and his assistant, Bridget Delaney, used the Adobe Spark app to create a virtual Senior Day for each spring sports team, including action photographs and bios of each athlete.

"We feel so bad for these seniors," Southard said. "We have these wrestlers and these track kids, they actually warmed up and were ready to compete and they were told they couldn't. I had my own experience in my house this year (son Zach is a senior athlete at Montville High School).

"All these senior spring athletes had their seasons cut short. Did these kids even know that was the last time they were going to step on a baseball field? ... We went on to basically have virtual Senior Days for the spring sports athletes. They came out so much better than we even envisioned. Your heart breaks for these kids."

Coast Guard also hired a head football coach and a head baseball coach since Southard has been working from home. He keeps the press releases coming.

"The commute is much better," he said with a laugh of working at home. "At our house, Coast Guard Academy media relations is upstairs and Stonington schools downstairs (his wife Kate is an elementary school teacher at West Vine Street School). Sometimes, when it's nice out, Coast Guard Academy media relations is on the back deck."

The three SIDs find that they call and text their colleagues more than emailing them.

"I'm more of a guy that's going to walk into their office and have a five-minute conversation than send an email," Southard said. "With no games, it's very weird."

"We do a lot of Zoom (video conference) meetings, a lot of texts," Longolucco said. "We're a small enough department where we just end up picking up the phone. While we're in lockdown mode here, even taking 10 minutes to call a coach gives you that sense of normalcy."

Said Longolucco: "You're still keeping busy, but there's new ways you're trying to do things you would be doing, a different kind of content to create. The goal is to want to be able to help the coaches, help our college as much as possible."

v.fulkerson@theday.com