I realize that the season is long been over and L
ipscomb basketball just had our end of season banquet.
What has prompted this entry is the just mentioned banquet, a
SI.com video about the Phoenix Suns equipment manager and someone asking me what I did for four years all within this past week.
I will give you an example of a typical day for a manager at Lipscomb, both at home and on the road.
At home:
As a manager for Lipscomb, we have two main jobs, laundry and setting up practice. Sounds easy right? Well yes and no.
Typical Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday:
Go to class like normal, make sure that practice is set up early, normally a 2 p.m. start time. Setting up practice consists of setting up the clock, making sure all of the basketballs are out, having towels out for wiping up sweat, getting pads/cones/practice pennies out for drills and rebound for the players as they come out to warm up.
During practice: run the clock, help with drills whenever a coach requests it, keeping stats and filming practice are sometimes needed, as coach requests.
I am somewhat of a computer wizz on Mac's and the coaches often call me or text me with issues that come up with video stuff, so I am always in the basketball offices helping the coaches out with computers. I also set up the computer for watching game film in the locker room after practice for scouting reports on the next team.
After practice one of the managers washes laundry and another one hangs it up in the players lockers for the next days practice.
Thursday (usually a game day):
Game day's are usually pretty busy. We have shoot around usually five hours before tip off. So we set up for it like a normal practice. After shoot around one manager will throw the laundry in the washer while the team goes to eat pre-game meal.
I was the one who also hung up the game jersey's, shorts and warm up tops in each players locker along with their laundry that had just finished drying.
I also had the responsibility of getting Gatorades for the post game meal, which consists of getting a coaches credit card and running to Kroger to buy an absurd amount of Gatorade and putting it in a cooler on ice for post game.
I would then go to my room, change into a shirt and tie and then head back to the arena to set up the video equipment for the game.
I make sure all the players have what they need (i.e. socks, different pair of shorts, new shoes if a pair blow out etc.). During the game I sit on the bench while another manager films the game. On the bench I keep the opponents shots, makes and misses to give to an assistant coach during media timeouts. I am also a water boy.
Post game, I tear down the video equipment, make DVD copies for the opponent and our coaches and make sure we have all of our equipment off the court.
Post game laundry is tough. I have to wash not only the game jerseys but also game towels, and their own loops (they each have a loop they put all of their gear on that we throw in the washers). Depending on game time, I usually don't get out of the arena until around midnight and often later.
On the road:
On the road is where a lot of work is done. First, I am responsible for packing everything we will need on the trip: projector to watch film, jerseys, shorts and warm up tops, all of the guys dirty laundry (we often practice right before we leave so I don't have time to wash) and the video equipment.
If we bus I load up all the bags we take and coolers of snacks and Gatorade for the guys as they get on the bus.
If we fly to a game, I assign the extra bags to freshmen who have to check the bag under their name.
Once we get to where we're going and check into the hotel, my first question to the front desk is ALWAYS "do you have guest laundry?" Now, I judge how good a hotel is not by location, cleanliness, comfortable beds and all of that jazz, no, if a hotel has guest laundry I am ecstatic!
If there is no laundry in the hotel, I ask for the nearest laundry mat and for them to call a cab. After I check into my room (roommates differ each trip) I go do the dirty laundry. I cannot tell you how many laundry mats I've been to in the middle of the night in some random town doing the teams laundry.
After completing laundry, usually in the wee hours of the morning, we wake up for breakfast and I put the laundry bag out in front of my room and tell the guys to come get their gear. Then it's usually time for practice or shoot around.
After practice/shoot around I put the laundry bag outside my room and the players bring their gear by. I then head out to wash it. (You can see why having laundry in the hotel is such a big deal to me, I spend a lot of time washing stuff on the road)
On the road coach expects me to help with food. Anthony, our athletic trainer, is in charge of ordering food (coach isn't very patient and likes to pre-order so we have food ready when we get to the restaurant.) If we go to pick up food to bring back to the hotel, I help out. Coach often asks me to go get the players Gatorades at a near by gas station, so I run over with his credit card and load up on Gatorades. (We give Gatorade a lot of business!)
Game days on the road I have to hurry and do the laundry right after shoot around and then lay the jerseys out before we leave for the guys to pick up.
At the game I get the job of filming. So I am usually way up near the rafters filming the game for the coaches to break down after. (example, Indiana this year, I could stand up and touch the roof. Indiana is a huge arena. I was at the highest point. They looked really small. But we won and I don't care, it was awesome!)
After the game I go with Anthony to get the post game food after dropping the guys off at the hotel (the bus takes us all these places by the way) and then I get to do the laundry!
During league play we will often play a team and then head straight to the next city/hotel for our game a day later. This means that I basically get zero sleep because I have to have the laundry done by morning for practice.
That is just a glimpse of what I did for four years as manager for Lipscomb. Oddly enough, I loved doing it!
There's more that I did, running errands and different odds and ends things for coach that I won't go into detail about but this is a general overview of my job.
So in case you were wondering what I did on the team for all these years, there's your answer. I was the man behind the scenes.
