Fourteen managers travel to road games.īacsik, myself, volunteer assistant Sean Kearns and communications assistant Claire Kramer start putting shoulder pads on lockers. ![]() Bacsik has the variant numbers committed to memory, as do the student managers who staff the locker room back home. Jadarian Price is 110, but Jack Kiser is still 24. Back home in the Guglielmino Athletics Complex, there are locker numbers that help avoid the confusion of players with the same jersey number getting the wrong pads, pants, shirts or underwear.įor example, Audric Estime is 122, but Jaden Mickey is still 7. The pads have players’ names tucked under the top shoulder pad plus their number, but it’s not always their jersey. The shoulder pads get wheeled in first, three dollies of clasps, straps, padding, plastic and two-sided tape. ![]() And safeties are closest to the exit Notre Dame will take to hit the field. Running backs are closest to the coaches. ![]() The players are broken up by position groups. To say Notre Dame’s equipment team has thought of everything undersells just how much foresight has been applied to this process.īefore any of the equipment is wheeled off the truck, Bacsik applies nameplate stickers to all 79 player lockers and the 11 full-time coach lockers in a separate room. To be part of the locker room set-up offers an appreciation of just how much goes into this college football road show, preparing for what could happen the next night and protecting against what can’t. Turns out there are checks for all this Bacsik has committed to memory. I catch my mistake two minutes later when holding up Keanaaina’s jersey in front of Yoakam’s locker and wondering why the backup kicker would dress in a blanket. That I accidentally put kicker Zac Yoakam’s jersey in the locker of defensive tackle Aidan Keanaaina - they’re five inches and 121 pounds apart, but both wear No. Taking Notre Dame on the road is a complicated process. What better way to learn what it takes to relocate the Notre Dame football program than to be part of that process? “The stuff that you can’t control is what keeps me up at night.”īacsik is so comfortable with the job he doesn’t mind putting The Athletic to work on a Friday morning. “Having been to nearly all these places now, you’ve got a pretty good recollection of how it works,” Bacsik said. And before that, he was head student manager, a lifelong Irish fan who counted basketball players Martin Ingelsby and Harold Swanagan as freshman roommates. Before that, he painted helmets on Friday nights and helped set up the home locker room while working on a graduate degree at Notre Dame. Before that, he was a volunteer assistant setting up away locker rooms, at one point flying to games at his own expense. It looks easy for head football equipment manager Chris Bacsik only because he’s spent more than 20 years mastering the thousands of steps required to take Notre Dame football on the road.īacsik - pronounced BASS-ick, but it’s just “Bass” to anyone who knows him - became Notre Dame’s head equipment manager six seasons ago. ![]() By 2 p.m., locker rooms are transformed into a temporary home base for Marcus Freeman’s program, a process overwhelming in detail. That’s how this five-hour choreography of cleats begins for Notre Dame’s equipment staff.
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