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September 19, 2003 |
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@
work
Managing the nuts and bolts of ‘team’ sports
When you’re managing the Cream
and Crimson, there’s bound to be a pink T-shirt or two
in the dryer.
By Susan Williams
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Photo by
Paul Martens
Jay Sears (right) has worked at IU for 28 years, 22
of them as equipment manager for men’s sports.
He is pictured here working with Mike Freitag, men's
assistant soccer coach, preparing for the soccer season. |
Athletes aren’t
the only people working up a sweat at IU’s Assembly Hall
in Bloomington. While collegiate athletic events are sheer entertainment
for sports fans, the fun and games represent serious work for
Jay Sears and Rusty Stillions, equipment managers of men’s
and women’s Olympic sports, respectively. With days that
might run from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., Sears and Stillions are
responsible for providing and maintaining uniforms and equipment
for approximately 500 athletes on the 23 sports teams based
at Assembly Hall. Three student equipment managers assist in
Assembly Hall—Natalie Barnhill, Dane Warren and Kurt Kinnaman—and
another 105 or so athletes, football players, are tended to
at Memorial Stadium’s facilities by Mitch Gudmundson,
football equipment manager.
Think the laundry piles up in your home? By the time practices
and/or competitions are done for the day, Sears estimates that
he and Stillions do 25 loads of laundry every 24 hours for their
“kids” in Assembly Hall. Factoring in the 50-pound
capacity washers at hand, that translates to about 1,250 pounds
of cream-and-crimson jerseys, singlets, shorts, trunks, pants,
socks and various unmentionables each and nearly every day.
Just managing the shoes could be a full-time job.
“The shoes are what people want to see when they visit
the equipment room. We bring out a size 17 or 18 basketball
shoe, and they’re amazed,” said Sears, who took
the time to measure a size 18 at nearly 14 inches. He wouldn’t
venture a guess as to how many shoes are sitting on equipment
and locker room shelves but agreed that it would be a very low,
but safe estimate to guess that each athlete has at least two
pairs. That equals roughly 1,000 pairs of shoes, from women’s
size 4 to that number 18.
“But,” said Sears, “that’s just an average.
The bigger guys are really hard on shoes and might blow out
several pairs in the course of one season. Men and women soccer
players have soft-ground cleats, firm-ground cleats and indoor
cleats. And in track and field, a heptathlete might have 10
pairs of shoes for various specialty events.”
After 23 years on the job, Sears has plenty of good stories.
It’s true, he said, that equipment managers used to sew
Velcro into the waistbands of basketball uniforms worn by Bob
Knight-coached teams. You never saw a shirttail out, did you?
It’s also true that Sears has turned a few loads of white
T-shirts pink. “Hey,” he said, “when you do
as much red and white as we do, you’re occasionally going
to see some things pink up. I dare anyone to do 25 loads a day
and not have that happen once in a while.”
His best stories have to do with good memories, though. He recalled
that he was hired as assistant equipment manager just before
Jerry Yeagley’s men’s soccer team won its first
NCAA national championship. With a total now of five national
titles, Yeagley will retire at the end of this season after
31 years as IU’s only soccer head coach. “When we
started this season, I reminded Coach Yeagley I was here for
his first title. He said, ‘Yes, I remember that. Let’s
go for six.’” |
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IU Home Pages + 400 E. 7th Street. Bloomington, IN 47405 + Phone: (812) 855-6494
Publication Date: August 15, 2003 + Comments: homepgs@indiana.edu
Copyright ©2003, The Trustees of Indiana University
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