Walk into California Baptist University’s Van Dyne Gym on a game day, and you will see it transform in preparation for a CBU Lancers basketball game. A lot of hard work goes into prepping the gym for the athletes and for visiting spectators.
Assistant Director of Athletics and Facilities Mo Roberson said it takes about three hours to make the gym ready for basketball games. Sports such as baseball and softball take much longer to prepare the outdoor field.
“A typical game day for us—let’s say it is basketball—is making sure the floor is clean, pulling out bleachers, making sure the bleachers are clean and then we have our baskets. We make sure those are taken care of and clean too,” Roberson said.
Additionally, the crew also sets up 30 feet of table and plugs in the electronics that will be housed there.
According to cbulancers.com, the Van Dyne gym, built in 1968, is the oldest athletic facility on campus. The gym underwent a $300,000 renovation project in 2005.
“When we had our bleachers redone, we had all of the electronics put into the base of the bleachers so that we could plug in to the Internet and all that stuff,” Roberson said.
Assistant Director of Athletics and Sports Information Micah McDaniel overseas the crew at the scoreboard table, which includes the scorekeeper, scoreboard operator, shot clock, the statisticians and the public address announcer.
Athletics event crews primarily consist of student workers. Roberson reflects that 40 to 50 students are employed for game operations and scheduled for specific events.
“We staff anywhere between 12 and 15 people for an event. Sometimes it could be more depending on the size of the event and what’s going on,” Roberson said.
Organization is a key component to the game management system currently in use in CBU athletics.
“On our website, we have a game management page that alerts our staff to when they’re working so they know their schedules,” Roberson said.
The student worker crew for an event is typically scheduled a month in advance.
Roberson reflects that the aid of individuals like full-time Athletics Facilities Assistant Adrian Jauregui helps make maintaining this system possible.
“We’ve had a lot of student workers come through and they’ve really developed how we do what we do,” Roberson said. He has been with the department for almost 14 years.
Basketball games and other events are also streamed live through the CBU athletics website cbulancers.com. Only one event can stream online at a time and there are some events with schedule overlap. For this reason the streaming schedule is set at the beginning of a season.
McDaniel is the liaison between any media reporters and athletes and coaches for interviews at the end of a game.
After a game, McDaniel also posts articles on the CBU athletics website.
“We have a section [on the website] called the ‘Luxury Box,’ because we also do what’s called ‘On-Demand’ videos and highlight clips. I staff someone who goes to the game and they take a flip camera and get highlight clips. We put a package together and attach it to the story that I write … and it [the video] goes into that Luxury Box section,” McDaniel said.
For away games, Roberson’s area of oversight is transportation—making sure the athletes get to their destinations. He will also schedule athletic trainers that sometimes accompany the teams.
McDaniel supplies statistics information about the Lancers to representatives running facilities at away games.
“We use a program called Stat Crew. All NCAA schools uses it. I’ll send them our roster file, which has all of our players’ names and jersey numbers and then they can import it into their stat system. At the end of the game, they’ll send me back the game file with a play-by-play of everything that happened and the final stats,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel requests this same information from teams that visit CBU for recording new stats and for creating the game flyers that ultimately reach spectators.
“We take pride in creating a good, positive game environment for everybody; the people who come and watch and the people who participate. Over arching all of that, we try to keep a standard of excellence in what we do. We try and do what we do and do it well so that you have good experience here,” McDaniel said.
