4C THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2005
KANSAS RELAYS
Relays lead to long days, nights
Hundreds of people combine to bring Kansas Relays to life
BY FRANK TANKARD
ftankard@hansan.com
KANSAN SPORTWRITER
Putting the Kansas Relies together is no small task. It takes hundreds of people.
There are meet officials and volunteers, announcers, a maintenance and grounds crew, student volunteers, a video crew, alumni and Kansas Athletics Department staff, just to name a few.
In the center of all the madness is meet director Tim Weaver, who works yearround to plan the event. Doesn't sound too hard, right? Well, it won't be in a couple of weeks.
But lately, Weaver has been working 18-hour days. That would be 90 hours a week, if he worked five days a week. But he's been working seven.
"I do go home at least to eat breakfast," he said.
Here's a snapshot of Weaver's office on the second floor of Allen Fieldhouse at 10 a.m. on a recent morning
D. J. Hilding, one of the five Kansas Relays interns and a member of the track team, sits at a computer. Phil Montgomery, a retired math professor and Relays volunteer, proofreads an entry list at a desk. Debbie Luman, the track and field office assistant, answers the desk phone while Weaver talks on his cell phone.
Meet posters are strewn across the floor waiting to be hung in Topeka, Wichita and Kansas City.
Resting on chairs and on the floor in some tangled order are admission buttons, officials' wristbands, megaphones, four helium tanks for 2,000 blue and gold balloon-
all-access passes, 84 12-packs of soda, 15 softballs for a children's clinic, coloring sheets for schools and day cares, meet schedules and Weaver's running shoes.
One corner of the room is dominated by an army of boxes that threatens to overrun the room.
"I don't even want to talk about that corner." Weaver said.
During the 45 minutes away from his cell phone and computer, Weaver missed nine calls and received 38 new e-mails.
Earlier that morning he had talked to a coach from Wichita State wanting to get an athlete into an invitational event; a T-shirt manufacturer who said that 2,000 Relays hats and visors that had been shipped from China were stuck in a customs office in Kansas City; a woman from the Bahamas trying to get a team into the meet at the last minute; the family of an official who had had emergency knee surgery and needed to be replaced; and an ice vendor.
"I talk to 100 people a day," he said. "It's my staff and assistants that keep that number lower than it could be."
Whew.
Meanwhile, across campus, a team of facilities workers prepared Memorial Stadium for the meet.
George Barnes, grounds supervisor, said the hardest part was prepping the area northeast of the stadium for the throwing events.
"It's a parking lot during football season," he said. "So it's quite a challenge."
Two men who have been putting in hour of overtime at the stadium during the last couple weeks are Dennis Kennedy, carpenter, and Roger Bartels, general maintenance.
Kennedy said the crew couldn't do much of its work until after last Saturday's preseason football scrimmage in the stadium. This week the crew of about 10 people has been out tearing down the goalposts, setting up the pole vault and sand pits, installing a rubber railing around the inside of the track and putting flags on top of the scoreboard.
"Basically, whatever they need and whatever they ask for, we'll do it," Kennedy said.
Bartels led a six-man crew last week who blew the leaves and debris out of the stands and cleaned the bathrooms, locker rooms, concourses and the turf on the field.
Bartels will be in charge of an eight-man team who will keep the stadium clean during the meet.
"It's a full-time chore keeping up with the trash and with the volume of people at the stadium during the Relays," he said.
While the grounds and maintenance crew were busy getting the stadium ready this week, the 54 members of the Student Relays Committee were also at work, doing various odd jobs to assist Weaver and spread word of the meet through campus.
Kelly Wilson, one of the three people who head the committee, was at Memorial Stadium from 3 to 9 p.m. on Sunday. She said the night before several people were there until 3 a.m. And she only expected things to get crazier as the date of the meet approached.
She said the committee had been blanketing campus and Lawrence with posters, signs and schedules, sending letters to alumni and doing too many other miscellaneous tasks to account for all of them.
"There's always something to do." Wilson, Plainville senior, said, "whether it's something little or something big."
While many people were
doing all the small chores, Tony Daniels, athletic events coordinator, was looking at the big picture.
He had worked to put together the event surrounding the track meet, meaning he had organized activities such as a Hy-Vee-sponsored shopping cart race for charity and a basketball tournament put on by the Vietnamese Student Association.
Another person looking at the big picture was Cliff Wiley, a former Kansas track and field sprint star, Olympian and world record holder, who now runs a law firm and lives in Kansas City. Kan.
Rachel Seymour/KANSAN
Wiley is one of the 37 members of the Greater Relays Committee, which ranges from people who work in the Kansas track and field office to former athletes and longtime fans.
Wiley said the committee met at least once a month for more than half of the year to make sure the meet was in the right direction.
As the final days leading up to the meet approach, and everyone works furiously to wrap up the preparation, those who do most of their work during the three days of the meet get ready.
This includes about 400 officials and volunteers. Weaver said, who come from throughout the state and even the nation to work the meet.
One of the officials who has been at it the longest is Del Shankel, former University chancellor and professor, among ever things.
Another person who will be busy during the Relays is Mike Lickert, who coordinates the
Shankel has officiated the meet nearly every year since about 1966, he said, usually as a timer or judge at the finish line. He said he wouldn't find out what he'd be doing this year until shortly before the meet.
Tim Weaver, Kansas Relays director, spends hours at his computer e-mailing and making preparations for the Kansas Relays each year. Several students helped Weaver prepare for the relay by sorting materials and equipment at Memorial Stadium March 17.
video board.
video board. It takes a video crew of 16 to 18 people, he said, to run four or five cameras and coordinate the clips, live video and instant replays that are shown on the screen.
"It's like putting on a live TV show for 10 hours," Lickert said.
"In all, that's probably about 250 individual slates," he said.
He said he had worked for weeks to type and organize the slides that would go on the screen at the start of each event. Each slide includes two slates: one that shows the name of the event, and another that shows the Kansas Relays record, American record and world record.
Perhaps the busiest people during the meet are the four in the announcer's booth.
Don Steffens, who announces the high school
track events, has announced the meet for about 30 years.
Steffens said he prepared for the meet by going through hundreds of pages of statistics from state and national meets.
"There's a lot to do to get ready for it, obviously," he said. "A lot of it is getting up on the sport."
Steffens tries to say something about each athlete as they step up to the starting line, he said, meaning he had to research thousands of athletes.
After the last event is finished on Saturday, as long as the weather holds out and all goes well, the people who put on the Kansas Relays will likely breathe a collective sigh of relief, grateful for the meet's conclusion.
For Weaver, it means it's time to get to work on next year's meet, the planning of which has already begun.
Edited by Austin Caster
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