Unsung Hereos Of The Game

2010-2011 Marist Managers

By: Matt Sutor
November 2010

They are the people that never come to mind when watching a Final Four game.

When watching a team cut down the nets after a conference championship, they are never shown on television.

The coaches will never mention them in the post-game interview after a win over a top ranked team.

Yet Final Four berths, conference championships, and historic upsets could not happen without the hard work and dedication of NCAA basketball team managers.

Team managers do all the duties that the players do not want themselves. They do they the laundry, take food orders, pack all the bags, and other tasks that take hours for the sake of the players on the team.

"Being a manager is all about having the right attitude," said Rob Hoey, head manager for the Marist College men's basketball team.

2008-2009 Marist Managers

 Hoey, a junior, has been a manager since his first semester of freshman year, and is in his second year as the head manager. "You have to wake up early a lot, skip going to parties, things like that," Hoey said. "At the same time you get to travel with the team and see how other teams run their programs. You see a lot of stuff the normal college student doesn't get to see."

However, being a manager takes its toll on a 20-year old trying to find a medium between good grades and a demanding job. "It's stressful because you have to balance a 15-credit course load with 50+ hours a week in the gym," Hoey said.

The work does not go unnoticed by everyone, though.

"Rob and his staff are pretty important to our program," Marist assistant coach Ty Weeks said. "They take care of a lot of stuff that our players can't spend time with. Since our players put in a lot of hours on the court and the weight room, it's important for them to devote time to school work. Our managers handle things like laundry and practice set up so our players can just focus on getting better on the court and getting good grades."

Players from the Marist women's basketball team appreciate the time their managers put in as well.

"It's nice to have managers doing daily things because between practice and school work there isn't much time left for us to do things like washing our practice and game uniforms," said senior guard Erica Allenspach. "The managers are at practice everyday and while we're practicing they have already washed our practice gear for the next two days which makes it nice and saves us time."

These tasks force Hoey and his staff of six other undergraduate students to arrive to practice 45 minutes before it begins in order to set everything up. These duties include setting up the clock, filling up water bottles and large water jugs, taping the court, where the coaches have asked taped to be put down for drills, folding towels, video set up and filming, and laying out practice gear for the players.

 Since there is always so much to do, Hoey routinely finds himself meeting with members of the school's athletic department.

"I have to talk to Rob or one of the other managers a couple times a week just about general stuff," said Darren McCormack, Marist Associate Athlethic Director in charge of facilities and operations. "Simple stuff like where things in the building are like the clock or where the shooting machine goes after practice. It sounds easy but if something were misplaced or couldn't be found it would look bad on Rob and the other managers."

When practice starts, Hoey understands his place.

"For me and the other managers this is a business, not a club," he said. "We can't be joking around on the sidelines. Just because practice is going on we still need to take care of things like water bottles, filming, shot charts, giving the players towels, etc."

The business-first attitude is a sentiment felt at other programs as well.

"I got to know the players and coaches, but I don't think they ever viewed me as a friend," said Lindsey Mehring, a former manager for the University of Rhode Island men's basketball team. "It's not like they were unfriendly, but everyone understood that the other managers and I had jobs to do. I never took offense to anything; for the most part I liked the guys on the team."

Hoey and his staff get along well with the players, but he understands that the frustration that sometimes comes out at the managers.

"Sometimes I have to be the bad guy," Hoey said. "We do so much for the players, but at somepoint we have to say "NO" and they don't  really like hearing that as an answer. It's stressful. Sometimes you want to quit, but at the end of the day it's worth it."

Many student manager choose to become managers in order to gain connections to college coaches. By earning these connections, they hope to land future coaching positions or other basketball related jobs.

For Hoey, working on Chuck Martins staff for the last three years has put him in a position to meet people with high profiles in the world of the NCAA and NBA basketball.

"This past summer I was able to work some elite camps through Coach Martin's recommendations," Hoey said. "I met (Villanova head coach) Jay Wright, (Assistant Executive Dir. of Basketball Operations for the Boston Celtics) Leo Papile, (St. John's head coach) Steve Lavin, and (ESPN NBA basketball announcer) Mark Jones and much more. Coach Martin was very helpful in directing me towards those jobs, but as Hoey said, he couldn't have recommended me if I hadn't proven myself the last two years."

In order to prove himself, Hoey has to go through mountains of jobs to help prepare the team for game days. "We have to coordinate film exchange with the schools we're playing weeks before," Hoey said. "But on game day itself we never stop. Every game day is the busiest day of the week."

On every game day the managers have to lay out the player's uniforms for them in their lockers, set up shoot around, clean up after the shoot around, go to the team pre-game meal, pick up the meals for the officials, help the visiting team arrive and get them anything they need such as towels, return home to shower and change, and then arrive back to the gym two and a half hours before the game begins.

During the game, the routine does not change.

"In the game we still have a lot to do," Hoey said. "We make sure the players have water and the coach always has a clean clipboard. We probably only watch about 15 minutes of a 40 minute game."

In addition to all the things managers do to help a team, their value as people cannot be overlooked.

"I think the best part of having managers is that it's another personality around the team, especially on school breaks," Allenspach said. "You spend every day with the same teammates on and off the court and the managers mix in there with different personalities that spice things up."

Because of their value to the team, head manager at prominent programs like Kentucky and Duke University receive full scholarships. Marist, on the other hand, only offers its student managers a few hundred dollars a year.

"I definitely think that managers at smaller Division I schools should receive a scholarship or some type of financial aid considering the amount of work they put in," Allenspach said. "They attend every practice and every game like the players do and I think they deserve at least more money then what they are being paid."

For some managers though, money is not what motivated them to do the best job they can.

"It's nice to receive some money but there are two big things that keep me coming back," Hoey said. "One is the connections I can get from the coaches if I continue to do my job the right way. The second is no matter what job I end up with, this job will have taught me great time management skills, patience, and communication skills. I already know that after I graduate and my managerial days are over, I'll never regret one second of my overall managerial experience.