Pack it. Load it. Transport it – Husky Football Equipment Management.

Home or away, before the UConn Husky Football team can run on to the field, another team has already put in hours of work behind the scenes prior to the fans filling the stadium – the UConn Football Equipment Team. How do you equip over 100 players, and roughly 50 coaches and support personnel with everything they need to perform to the best of their abilities on the field? Enter the Equipment Staff, made up of full time and student managers, who pack and transport a few thousand pounds of equipment to Rentschler Field for home games and across the country for away games.

For an operation this complex, days or weeks can be involved in the planning, organizing, and shipping of equipment. A typical home game for the equipment staff looks like this: the players pack their equipment, including their shoulder pads and other protective pads, two pairs of cleats, gloves, and various other accessories in their game equipment bag, two days before the game. The equipment staff packs everything else for them, including uniforms, helmets, undergarments, cold weather apparel, if the forecast calls for it, and anything else that is deemed necessary for a given game. They also pack a game wardrobe for all coaches and main support staff including pants, polo shirts, jackets, rain gear, hats, gloves, shoes, and the like. The equipment truck, which is provided and driven by Lippincott Van Lines, per contract, is packed up and heads to Rentschler on the day before the game, where the staff unpacks everything and sets up the locker room ahead of the best day of the week.

Game Day: the truck carries all of the equipment necessary for all aspects of the program, including equipment used by Sports Performance, Video Services, Athletic Training, the Coaches’ headset communication system, and WTIC-1080 radio broadcast team. On game day, the equipment staff arrives approximately four and a half hours prior to kickoff and works to ensure that the locker room, field, sideline, and coaches’ booth are all up and ready to go when the team arrives two hours prior to kickoff. After that, all focus is on various pre-game and in-game responsibilities, followed by roughly one and a half hours of clean-up post-game and truck packing for the return trip to Storrs. Once back home at the Burton Family Football Complex, the clean-up and initial preparations for the next game begin almost immediately.

Good luck to the UConn Husky Football Team as they kick-off the 2015 season!