Sleepless Nights

It has become almost a ritual for me...nights of interrupted sleep leading up to the first week of sports competition at Pacific University.

Hence, here I am at 12:40 in the morning, downing a cup of "Sleepy Time Tea," hoping to get my brain to settle down enough to get a few hours sleep before heading into the office to begin two of the more hectic weeks of my year.

What makes it hectic? First there are the tasks to complete before the start of every individual sports season: compiling rosters, writing player bios, posting said rosters and bios to the Web site, writing season previews, posting said preview to Web site, writing the first notebook releases of the season, weekend game programs.

Then there is bringing my crew of Work Study students up to speed. I have a span of four days to hire and train a crew of 10-12 students who will be my backbone during all of our home events: scorekeepers, statisticans, scoreboard operators, clock operators. This will include at least a pair of evening training sessions and some one-on-one time with specific people, such as our volleyball stats crew.

The training is to prep those hard working students for a long first weekend. We host a two-day, seven-team volleyball tournament this weekend. Seven matches each day, including two matches each at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. It stretches my crew thin when everything needs to run flawlessly.

On top of that this year is a new addition: a women's soccer doubleheader on Friday and two more games on Sunday running concurrently with the volleyball tournament. I will probably have to hire outside for at least one person. It is a cruel way for a one-man sports information office to start the year.

Then there are the media guides. Three 40-page publications documenting the men's soccer, women's soccer and volleyball seasons. Thankfully I was able to get the majority of the work on these done before this week came. That leaves the player bios, season previews and team photos.

Those items, however, are partly at the mercy of the coaches and how important they think it is to get the information they need to me in a timely fashion. For some, the idea of writing 2 sentences about what each of their athletes will contribute to the team is too daunting. Scheduling team pictures is easy...provided we can sync up everyone's class schedule and not take any time away from practice.

So, here I am in front of the computer. The plea for student workers has been submitted to the daily student e-newsletter and the plea for volunteers has been submitted to the staff e-newsletter. The cup of tea is almost empty. Hopefully my mind can stop racing and preserve some cells for Monday. I will need them.

Oh...and there's meeting with the advertiser who I need to get a decent chunk of my operating budget from. Better have the game face on.