Do you ever see basketball players carrying around smoothies, protein bars or a Gatorade bottle full of water? How about coaches carrying clipboards, laminated notes, whistles or even gum in their pocket? It’s managers who gets those items where they need to be.
“Every morning, my job is to fill up the giant Gatorade cooler of water, and then I put out an assortment of different beverages. I’m kind of the beverage czar, if you will,” head Duke women’s manager Michael Romney said.
As the old saying goes, it takes a village. In the organizational hierarchy of men’s and women’s basketball, managers surely aren’t at the top of the totem pole — they are usually behind the bench during games or wiping the floor during timeouts. However, they are a truly integral part of both programs, and their role has only increased during March Madness.
Waterboy, rebounder, practice player, bus loader and even bodyguard? All in a day’s work for Duke’s student basketball managers. Practically any time the teams take the floor at any location, managers are expected to be present. Oftentimes, this involves work well before and after the players and coaches arrive at the facility. The proper equipment for a workout does not just appear out of thin air.
About an hour before players take the floor, it’s up to the managers to set up any equipment needed for a successful workout. While some things like basketballs or cones seem obvious, these necessary items also include a coach’s favorite gum or a player's preferred smoothie. After rebounding for players and assisting in individual drills, the whistle blows to begin official practice.
Generally, a team session will consist of some combination of film, a lift and on-court work. Managers are expected to help prepare for all of these aspects, and are required to hold an extra ball and towel to keep court activities running smoothly. After the final whistle, the work is not done. It’s back to rebounding and drills for roughly an hour before clean-up excuses the managers for the day.
Practices, road trips and home game days are all mandatory attendance for managers, although seniors are generally the ones who will travel with the men’s team. Neither men’s head coach Jon Scheyer or women’s head coach Kara Lawson have shied away from scheduling lengthy nonconference trips, and they take managers to a variety of destinations — Las Vegas and Brookings, S.D., included.
This time commitment — running from about 8-11 a.m. every practice day for the women and 1-5:30 p.m. for the men — naturally creates a challenge when it comes to regular student duties. But the managers love the grind, and men’s manager Miles Cooperman even claims the constrained time allows them to focus better when it comes time to sit down and hit the books.
“I think it actually has helped me maintain a more disciplined schedule where I go to class in the morning, practice in the afternoon, and then try and get all my work done before whatever I want to do at night,” he said.
That level of exertion has only grown as both Duke squads advance through the NCAA Tournament. While the men’s team took a bus over to nearby Raleigh — both Cooperman and Preston Sharkey joined the team at the Lenovo Center — the women’s team stayed right at home for the first two rounds.
This created some different challenges for the men’s and women’s manager groups. While Cooperman and Sharkey had to hop on the bus for 30 or so minutes down Interstate 440 and handle everything that comes with traveling to a foreign stadium, women’s manager Michael Romney had to tackle the task of getting Cameron Indoor Stadium ready to be an NCAA host site.
“I have to be here to kind of transform this stadium, because it essentially doesn't become Duke and becomes property of the NCAA. So there’s a lot of different marketing things that we have to work on,” Romney said ahead of the Blue Devils’ two games last weekend.
Both squads have had quite the schedule this past month. The men competed in Newark, N.J., for the second weekend — and are traveling to San Antonio for the Final Four this weekend — while the women traveled south to Birmingham, Ala., for Sweet 16 and Elite Eight matchups with North Carolina. While the hours go up, so does the focus on and off the floor.
“I would just say it's a lot of time on the road,” Cooperman said.
“There's definitely a level of focus and intensity that's higher during the postseason … There's definitely an understanding that this is the important time of the year, the whole program is locked into that and aware of that. So we have to be our best at this at this time of the year as well,” Romney said.
For Cooperman, being a senior also means not having to rebound for Paolo Banchero anymore at 7 a.m. coming from East Campus — and getting some serious nicks and bruises along the way. After getting a call that the future No. 1 pick in the NBA draft needed him to rebound, a younger Cooperman had to figure out how to make it to Cameron Indoor Stadium by 7 a.m. without taking the C1 bus — which does not start its route until 7 a.m.
To get around this inconvenience, a rentable scooter became the chosen mode of transport. But what Cooperman thought could be a fun adventure turned sour fast. As he sped down the road to try and make it to the arena on time, his scooter took flight as a result of a pothole. Instead of making it on time, Cooperman showed up in front of Banchero and then-assistant coach Amile Jefferson with a skinned knee and elbow five minutes late.
Everyone can more or less picture the typical duties a manager will perform during the day. Rebounding basketballs, passing out water bottles and helping out with drills are just a few examples of a daily task. But new problems arise every day, and managers are expected to fill the gaps to ensure the problem doesn’t lose a step. This includes setting up a makeshift basketball court at local hotels made of tape for team walkthrough.
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For Cooperman, his unorthodox task is loading the bus — a real jigsaw puzzle. Sharkey and others get to play bodyguard for the players. Romney even got to be a janitor for some furry friends.
“We used to have these puppies through the puppy kindergarten that worked with our team, and the puppies are great … but they're not super well-trained, and sometimes they pee on the court. So my funniest thing that people wouldn't know about is I've cleaned up dog pee like four or five times on the court,” Romney said.
It may sound like a slog, and it definitely is, but there are clear bright spots to being part of the team. Managers get to travel to some of the country’s most famous arenas, experience ACC championships and get your fair share of hooping in on the side. Romney gets his fix in through also being a practice player for the women’s team, while Cooperman and Sharkey have found themselves in several pickup games against Scheyer. On top of all of that, they tend to develop a clear bond with those you work with. They might even become forever friends.
“I think my favorite part of the job is definitely the people you meet. I think I was fortunate enough that the three other senior managers … are some of my best friends at Duke, and will be some of my best friends for the rest of my life,” Cooperman said.
Despite the unglorified position, the role of student managers cannot be denied. From rebounding basketballs to making Gatorade, they’re the glue that holds Blue Devil basketball together.