Home Sweet Home
By Christy Cabrera Chirinos
HurricaneSports.com
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – The jerseys and helmets are laid out hours before the Hurricanes arrive.
The work of making their locker room feel like home, however, has been happening for days.
Long before Miami’s players and coaches arrive at Hard Rock Stadium on any given Saturday, Associate Athletic Director and Head Equipment Manager David Case, Associate Director of Equipment Sam Nichols and Assistant Director of Equipment Ben Holland have meticulously run through checklist after checklist of everything the Hurricanes might need on game day.
Uniforms. Helmets. Shoulder pads. Cleats. Backup jerseys. Backup pants. Backup cleats. White boards. Sideline cooling fans. Extra helmets. Extra shoulder pads. Extra face masks. Rain gear. A portable laminator, in case play cards have to be protected from unexpected bad weather. Lucky gear a coach may want to wear or have in his locker. The Hit Stick. And on occasion, Case and his staff have even been charged with making sure the Turnover Chain arrives safely.”That’s probably the most nervous you get, when you have to watch that thing,” he laughed.
Once everything is accounted for and packed, Miami’s equipment – and supplies for the athletic training staff – is loaded into a 53-foot semi-truck that, on the day before home games, makes the 24-mile trek from Coral Gables to Miami Gardens.
There, Case and his staff will unload everything the Hurricanes need and begin setting up the locker room. Members of Miami’s athletic training staff work alongside the equipment room staff, setting up a mobile clinic that will take care of any health issues that may arise.
The process has become so streamlined that after three hours or so of work, an entire truck has been unloaded and unpacked. Then, the game day countdown to kickoff itself.
“We’ve been doing this so long that you already kind of have a clock in your head with everything that needs to get done,” Case said. “By the time you’ve worked 200-something games, it’s just routine.”
In every way that matters, Hard Rock Stadium is home for the Hurricanes. But for Case and his staff, every game is a road game because Miami’s home field isn’t on campus.
Equipment can’t be left at Hard Rock from week to week. And if anything is forgotten at Miami’s football facility, it’s not exactly an easy 10-minute stroll from the stadium to the equipment room to bring the wayward item to the field.
Still, Case and his staff pride themselves on making sure the Hurricanes are as comfortable in their space as possible, so along with making sure everything players need arrives at Hard Rock safely, the trio takes time while setting up the locker room to personalize the space.
Players are greeted with Hurricanes-specific signage when they walk in. The plates above their lockers feature their names, hometowns, and Sebastian the Ibis. Miami’s orange and green “U” is prominently displayed everywhere. Drinks and energy bars are easily within reach.
And the equipment staff’s efforts don’t go unnoticed.
“I think about that every time we walk in there. It’s an unbelievable job they have. They have to do stuff on the fly, very quickly and everything can change,” Hurricanes tight end Will Mallory said. “We almost had a rain game this season and they had to bring two pairs of cleats and double the pads for everyone. For them to do all that they do at the level they do it, it’s impressive. And every day I try to thank them for it, even if it’s a quick little thank you. What they do is very important and special to all of us.”To understand what Case and his staffers mean to Hurricanes players past and present, one need only look around the Miami equipment room to get an idea.
Signed posters, jerseys, and thank-you cards fill the corners of practically every wall, as do helmet decals shared by other equipment room staffs around the country. When former players like Willis McGahee are back on campus, they often make it a point to stop in, even if that means Case will put them to work packing equipment during their visits.
And each summer, when the equipment room staffers send former Hurricanes players currently in the NFL pre-training camp care packages filled with Miami gear, pictures and messages of gratitude from those players flood social media making Case proud.
“When I was younger, my favorite part of the job was going in and watching the games. But now that I’m older and I’ve seen a lot of games, to me, it’s more about the kids that work with us in the equipment room, the players we deal with and the coaches we’ve worked with,” said Case, who joined Miami in 2013 after serving as the Director of Equipment Operations at Florida Atlantic University where he worked with former Hurricanes coach Howard Schnellenberger. “One of the big things for us is when we see student managers work with us for years and then turn their experience into jobs for themselves. You see those kids grow up, get married, have kids and come back and visit and that’s special.”Then our players, you see a guy come in as a freshman. He may not play a lot and then by the time he leaves, he’s a first-round draft pick. Even the players who may not play as much, so many of them are good kids who come in here and talk to us. Then they too, come back and hang out with us. It’s become more to me about the people than anything else. Yeah, it’s a lot of work, but there’s a lot of cool people, too.”
As intense as it is for Case and his staff to get Miami’s locker room ready before kickoff, the pace is even more frenzied when the game is over.
Because odds are two NFL teams will need to use Hard Rock Stadium the next day, Case and his staff begin re-packing what they can even, while the Hurricanes are still on the field.
“Once halftime’s over, we’re getting some stuff packed up and getting it loaded on the truck early so when we get done with the game, we’ve already gotten a little bit of a head start,” Case said. “There’s a lot of work that goes on during the game that nobody ever sees: getting the locker room set up for halftime, getting stuff ready for post-game, getting shower towels out, cleaning up the locker room a little, packing up some of the trunks.
“But that four-hour window during the game is almost the easiest time of the week for us. … Our goal during the game is making sure there are no issues for the players, no issues for the coaches. We want their equipment to be the last thing they think or worry about. So, if a game goes by and nothing happens with that, then that means we had a successful day.”
Once the game is finished and the equipment room staff returns to campus, laundry starts almost immediately. A countdown clock ticking down the minutes until the next game is reset. The pre-game routine begins again, all while the equipment room staffers and student managers make sure players and coaches have everything they need for daily practices, too.
Some rest, Case jokes, will come when the season ends. And even then, something is always happening, especially since he supervises the equipment needs for every team on campus.
But, Case says, he wouldn’t have it any other way, particularly because of where he works.
“One of the things that kind of makes Miami a lot more special than other places is that our guys come back and they care about the school. They care about how the team is doing. They want to come in and be around here a lot,” he said. “So, you know, whether it’s Edgerrin James showing up at the Florida game and wanting to get a couple shirts and a hat, yeah, we make it happen. But they come in here and hang out with us and they’re just regular guys. It’s special.”
