Secret world of college basketball student managers

Watch any college basketball game and at some point you will see a player return to the bench angry over picking up his second or third foul in the first half. The player will sit down and without fail, beside his head, a hand holding a cup will materialize. At this time, the player has three options regarding the offered cup: He may gratefully take the water and swill the cup before tossing it over his head behind the bench; he may angrily push the cup away, or worst of all, he may just leave the cup of water dangling precariously beside his face while betraying no reaction whatsoever.

This is known as basketball’s version of Chinese water torture and during my collegiate years, I seemed to specialize in awkward offerings of cups of water. Once I made the mistake of discussing this situation with other students and this inspired a friend, Shaw, to make a cottage industry out of taunting me from the student section every time my cup of water was not immediately claimed by a player.

"Clay, can’t you see, he doesn’t want any water?"

Once, twice, even three times Shaw would repeat his call while I could not answer him until my forlorn offering was the fertile crescent of liquid refreshment mockery. I may not know why the caged bird sings, but I know the pain of a woebegone hand offering unseen water to the downtrodden basketball player. Chances are up until now you’ve barely even noticed that hand filled with water ... welcome to my story.

I believe I was the worst student manager in the history of Division I basketball. Certainly, I was the worst basketball manager in George Washington University’s illustrious basketball manager history. During my freshman year, I was almost fired from a volunteer position by the head manager after breaking Mike Jarvis’ wife’s blender on the locker room carpet. I was never told why the Jarvis family blender had been commandeered by the George Washington men’s basketball team or why a school with more money than Croesus did not provide the team with their own blender. All I was told was that Mrs. Jarvis was displeased by the breaking of her blender and that my head was very close to the chopping block. When the new blender arrived, I was no longer trusted to make protein shakes. Unfortunately for me, paper cups filled with water did not break so easily.

The unsung hero of college sports: Student managers working behind-the-scenes. (Getty Images)

My failures were legion and my accomplishments were slim. In three years, these were my other most notable feats: I was often reprimanded for kicking basketballs against the bleachers soccer style as opposed to leaning over and picking them up; I was once told by Temple coach John Chaney to, "Get out of the way;" I played 'peg the coaches' kid' with tennis balls with Tom Penders, Jr. while Bonzi Colson Jr. ran around the gym and I inadvertently dumped a cooler of ice on a player as he attempted to rehab his sprained ankle in the training room which was to result in the only time I was ever cursed soundly in a foreign language by a Belorussian national. My attendance at practice was sporadic at best and I rarely operated the shot clock with anything approaching consistency. Basically I was the student manager equivalent of Nick Van Exel. Thankfully my eyes were not also located in the back of my head.

During my three years of middling service, I was responsible for several seminal tasks aside from offering water to the players. These tasks were the student basketball manager equivalent of carrying the nuclear codes for the president and required the mental acuity and verbal dexterity of a lobotomized chimpanzee. My duties: Loading a chest of ice for the visiting team and the referees replete with a varied collection of sodas, ensuring that other managers did not sneak into the reporter’s lounge (the lounge was a retrofitted racquetball court with blue curtains hanging from the walls) and eat the free pizza (I always looked the other way), making sure the basketballs arrived in time for warm-ups and after a nasty outbreak of flu, making sure that no one’s water bottle top got mixed up with anyone else’s.

For these important jobs I received the following recompense: One pair of mesh athletic shorts which were so sheer it was nearly impossible to wear them anywhere in public, a pair of basketball shoes that did not fit, warm-ups that appeared to have been designed by a blind man in 1954 and a seat in the locker room during half-time where I was responsible for making sure that orange slices were consumed by the team.

Right now, many astute readers are probably inquiring, "But what of the life lessons your experience tattooed onto your collegiate soul?" Well, these platitudes for healthy living can certainly not be overlooked. Thanks to the hours spent in the gym, I learned a myriad of life lessons from such George Washington coaching greats as Tom Penders and Mike Jarvis. Among them:

1. Should you ever coach a basketball team, do not choose the players on the floor based on who you like. In the immortal words of Tom Penders, "If Adolf F’in Hitler could hit the three, I’d play him." For the remainder of the season, I could not escape the image of Der Fuhrer coming off a screen and squaring up from downtown. This made the decision to play Idi Amin on my intramural law school team much easier.

2. When throwing tennis balls at young children, it is important to aim for the feet.

3. There is nothing wrong with wearing a full-length leather coat with shorts underneath.

4. When John Chaney yells really loud, he can make the pipes in the lower level George Washington’s Smith Center vibrate. This is not good for your team.