Confessions from a Stir-Crazy Manager and Team

by Joseph Kuykendall

            I’m writing this as I sit on the bus ride back to Harrisonburg. Because of our road-heavy schedule this year it takes a lot for me to say this but I couldn’t be more happy to be on this bus right now. A place with usual feelings of being entrapped now has an obscure feeling of freedom—a feeling I (we) haven’t felt since Tuesday.

            We got to Delaware Tuesday night, per usual, and things got off to a great start with our dinner that night—I had some delectable shrimp tacos. A great workout (except for the random smelly dude in the workout room who I hope got deodorant for Valentine’s day) with Director of Ops. Rob Summers, grad assistant Kevin Albright and fellow manager Michael Qura prepared me for a great night of sleep. A last minute quality conversation with roommate Andrey Semenov and I knocked out dreaming of spoiling Delaware’s unblemished conference record.

            Wednesday was like any other game day and a few minutes before we left the hotel for the game we got word to bring all of our belongings because we were going to depart towards home following the game no matter how long it took us to get home.

            You know how the game went, no need to rub salt (especially ice salt because it didn’t work well enough to get us home on time, apparently) in that wound. Following the game I was scrambling around trying to get game film and a basketball from Delaware (when Delaware won at Convo it was Monte Ross’ 100^th win so they took the game ball agreeing to give us one when we played at their place, therefore I was the one tasked with making sure we got it back). It took longer than usual for me to do that but luckily Qura (known as “Q”), and other manager Josh Warren (known as “Sitch”) took care of the locker room cleanup. 

           I finally had everything I needed and made it back to the locker room. I saw it was snowing outside which, although I love snow, wasn’t the greatest thing to see considering it wasn’t supposed to start in Newark until midnight. That’s also about the time that Q and Sitch relayed the message of no school (yes!) but that we have to stay another night (no!). What college student wants to spend a snow day away from school let alone cornered in a hotel in a place you know nobody? I was emotionless because of the mixture of happy and sad emotions.

            Administration had called and requested we stay the night for the safety of the team. As much as that is not what I wanted to do, it made complete sense. Rash decisions around safety aren’t always our best ones and our safety is more important than making it back in time to have a day off in the ‘burg.

            So Wednesday night was spent contemplating what we could be doing if we were all back in Harrisonburg with the rest of the college crew. It ended up being a low key night with a bunch of “chilling” until midnight when I affectionately jumped on Dimitrije Cabarkapa to wish him a happy 21^st birthday. What a birthday for the guy who had the game of his short career the evening before! Hopefully it’s the start of something great.

            It ended up being another late night for no reason and I went to bed with the intentions of the team leaving at 11 in the morning (on Thursday) to make it back to the Valley. We woke up had a great breakfast and packed everything up. I was having a few laughs in Dimitrije and Kevin’s room when I went to go walk to my room to get my bags and head for the bus. As I was in the hotel hallway walking to my room, I heard the words of doom, “We’re staying another night.” Again, at the moment not what I wanted to hear but when safety is in the best interest for the decision, not much to complain about.

The view out my hotel window Thursday morning.

            All it meant was another day of just sitting around and staring at each other (not actually) because there was nothing better to do. We utilized the day off to watch film as a team and begin preparing for the next game. I can’t remember who exactly, it was either Q or Christian Pierce, had the quote of the trip when they walked into film saying, “This is worse than jail. In jail they at least have arts and crafts.”

            Some of our free time was spent pulling minor pranks on people. In charge of the movement was resident jokester Dimitrije. You can see what level of boredom we were brought to and how even the littlest things made us crack up. Can you say cabin fever?!

            Now, as we’re almost back to Harrisonburg it’s time to work hard and start a new winning streak—it all begins tomorrow. #CramTheConvo  

The awkwardly disproportionate amount of snow
 that was on my car hood and no where
else when I got to my car Friday morning.