The beat never stops for high school football coaches, even during the offseason. They have to make sure the players are getting to the weight room, going to clinics, and everything in-between to keep up with the pack.

Griswold head coach Gregg Wilcox has bigger issues at the moment.

“I’m a dentist,” Wilcox said. “We’ve been out since March 17th. I had to close the office along with (furloughing) everybody. I’m spending an enormous amount of time trying to prepare for the reopening, trying to move schedules around and reschedule patients. I have six weeks of patients (canceled) so far. Then I probably get 15, 20 voicemails a day that I have to answer.

“It’s been pretty busy.”

Wilcox is still putting time into coaching, but COVID-19 has screwed up the routines that so many coaches have at this time of year. The weight room and conditioning are a huge part of a football program, but that's impossible to do during a global pandemic.

“Here’s what’s been too bad about (that) — the kids we’re really having a good weight room program,” Fitch head coach Mike Ellis said. “We had good numbers in there. The kids were really pushing each other, and we were seeing some real nice gains in the weight room. So we felt good about that. We felt really good about the camaraderie of the team.”

Tim King, the head coach of the Valley Regional/Old Lyme co-op, said, “It’s pretty stressful not knowing whether or not (their working out). We had a great winter with the kids. The offensive line is one of the strongest I’ve ever had coming in.”

Coaches have to make adjustments and adapt on the fly during games. Now they’re doing it during a pandemic.

“We had a couple of videos produced for us for the kids (with) bodyweight workouts, sit-ups, push-ups, any type of activity like that,” King said. “There’s a lot of drills that they can do in the yard and, of course, during the emails I send out, I’m always emphasizing social distancing. Do these in your yard, not at school. Stay off campus.”

Ellis said, “We send out every night to the group a workout to do. It’s a lot of bodyweight stuff. We’re staying away from doing track workouts. We don’t want to put them on a (high school) track out there. Everything, they can do inside the house. What’s difficult is you can’t monitor anything. You really don’t know what’s going on.

“We’ve had one captain’s meeting with the kids over Zoom. We met with them and kind of talked with them about what we needed them to do going forward for the younger kids.”

One positive Ellis has found amongst all the changes are clinics. The clinic circuit is busy during the winter and spring with coaches traveling across and/or out-of-state to attend them.

“Colleges are offering free virtual clinics,” Ellis said. “I was planning on going to a Glazer Clinic (one of the biggest clinic services) in Northern New Jersey that was option-specific (Ellis uses a triple option offense). That was the week everything got shut down, so you can watch it online.

“If there’s a topic you like, you can jump in and learn a little bit from home. Rather than traveling, the cost of traveling, eating meals, you can sit (home) and do it.”

Ellis has been following the weekly clinics on Friday afternoon put together by John Marinelli, the former head coach at Greenwich who just completed his first year as Football Analyst on the University of Arizona staff.

Wilcox was able to attend a clinic as the Massachusetts state coaches held theirs in Foxborough on Feb. 28-29.

“Then the whole thing went south (coronavirus) and I went, ‘oh, man — am I in trouble?,’” Wilcox said. “There’s 500 guys at that clinic.”

Life seems to change at a dizzying pace daily with everyone wondering, and longing, for when it can get back to some semblance of normalcy. No one can say with any certainty if it will be safe to hold passing leagues this summer for high school football teams, or if teams can attend camps together.

“We look forward to going to UMass (every year),” King said. “The kids bond and stuff like that.”

Wilcox said, “I think the summer will straighten this thing out a little bit because it’s a virus. Typically, you don’t see viruses out in force in warm weather, but I’m worried about the fall. If it comes back, does it come back with a vengeance, and you get to mid-October and we’re right back where we were in mid-March?”

n.griffen@theday.com