Managing a track and field meet can take hours and days of preparation.
And Seneca track and field managers have learned what it takes to help with the process.
"Whenever we have a manager graduate, coach (Tom) Jordan and I always look for a freshman who fits the mold of being what we need in a manager," said coach Chris White. "At the time I was teaching a physical science class, and Ellen (Rogers) was in my class. That’s how I found the manager before Ellen too. In class you get to see the qualities that will help make a good manager. I generally look for the hard worker who is smart and will be dedicated to the team if we ask them to help. Ellen has been the epitome of dedicated, and did a great job for us over her four years here."
"I had coach White as my ninth grade Physical Science teacher and he just asked me one day if I wanted to help out at track with the scoring, specifically the scorebooks," said Rogers. "He also wanted me to handle the physicals and take attendance for all the track members on both the boys and girls teams."
Angie Littlejohn, a 2002 graduate of Seneca, was the manager before (Ellen), who started in 2003. Littlejohn is graduating from University of Virginia this year, according to White.
"She (Ellen) had all the traits I had been looking for in a new manager," said White. "Ellen started as manager in January 2003 at first practice for the Bobcats."
White, starting teaching in 1998, is in his ninth year of coaching and meet management. "Coach Jordan has been coaching and running off meets since well before I was born, so a lot of what we do has been developed over years and years or practice for him."
Manager to cross country runner
"I generally try not to use athletes in meet management because they have enough to worry about on meet day," said White. "I look for students who want to get involved with athletics, but don’t necessarily want to run for whatever reason. Now, by getting involved with track I think that lead to Ellen running cross country, which she will tell you probably never crossed her mind before helping with track. It was hard for her, but she always improved and I think she learned a lot about herself through that. I think finding students who are not athletes to help out with meets just involves more kids in a program that I think teaches them a lot. Our manager before Ellen went on to the University of Virginia and worked in their athletic department, although her dad had a lot to do with that as well. Ellen has gotten involved with the track team at Clemson and helps with their meet management. I’m a firm believer that you
don’t necessarily have to be an athlete to be heavily involved in athletics."
Preparation
"Well, I used to spend about six hours for a normal meet, including the actual four hour meet itself," said Rogers. "But now Chelsea (Cansler) is able to do all the preparation and beyond printing roster sheets, I have little preparation to do. At Clemson we usually get there an hour ahead of the meet to print finish line and field score sheets and then about 30 minutes after the meet to clean up and that’s it."
During (Ellen's) freshman year, White mentioned, "I remember one meet early in the year when she was a freshman when she was learning to keep the books and it was a meet against Wren or Daniel or maybe Hanna. When you keep score, you always have mean coaches looking over your shoulder and pointing out all your mistakes. There was a small mistake which changed the winner of the meet, and it devastated Ellen that she had made this mistake. She left crying and I thought we’d have to find another manager."
"After that, she (Ellen) developed the personality that you have to have in that position where she no longer rushed through the get a score done, and she always double checked to make sure it was right," said White. "She also got better at telling coaches (myself included) to stop bugging her so she could do what she was doing."
"Being a valuable person to the entire team obviously helped my self-esteem," said Rogers, who first started as team manager in 2003. "I had to be more outspoken and assertive. I learned that you have to sometimes be firm when people are not standing where they should be or you need a minute to find a specific time. After a few meets Coach Jordan started calling me "mean woman" so I would remember to be "mean" because I was being too nice and not getting my job done. This has helped me immensely in later positions. Specifically helping with Clemson track."
"My biggest challenge has been trying to stay on task while a million people are asking for their times and other various questions that it seems everyone asks at every meet and so few people know the answer," said Rogers. "When you enter results in the book its important that you don’t get distracted or else you may forget to enter something or you may get behind so you won't be able to calculate the score quickly after the meet (has finished)."
College level
"At Clemson I help at the meets with the scoring on the computer and generally help the other scorers and timers with anything necessary to make the meet run smoother. I only used the computer at Seneca for the region meet and the Golden Corner Invitational," said Rogers. "At Seneca now I enter results of every race and field event in the computer and print out a copy for the bookkeepers to copy off of. This way it eliminates score confusion and is faster."
Training on-site
Rogers, teaching as the meet moves on, helped Cansler alittle, she says. "Little to none in the training department, apart from trying to remember what I had trouble with when I first started. I basically taught her how to use the score books and how to score everything. I answer questions and teach her as we go along because sometimes you cannot forsee the unique circumstances at specific meets. Coach White and coach Jordan are her real trainers as they see her everyday and need her to make the team function. I just help where I can."
Rogers, acting as a mentor to Cansler, passed on her knowledge to help scoring operate smoothly. "Ellen’s been great at helping Chelsea learn how to keep score and run things at the finish line," said White. "She helps her do the books, and answers all her questions. Ellen has become very knowledgeable regarding track and field, and has shared all of that knowledge with Chelsea. It’s interesting to see two VERY different personalities work together like they do."
Crowd control major focus
White always working to improve meet atmosphere and operation, believes crowd control is the biggest challenge in organizating a meet. "That is something we are constantly trying to work on, but something is always coming up. Whether it is athletes all around the finish line, or people crossing the track during a race, or whatever might go on in the stands. When you get that many people in the same spot as often as we do, not everyone is always paying attention to what is around them.
"You’d like to think that anyone not competing would just stay in the stands, but it doesn’t happen that way, and we generally use all our manpower to run off the events which doesn’t allow a person to regulate this (crowd control)," said White. "It gets frustrating, and sometimes it holds up the meet when people are in the way. Since I am a control freak, it drives me absolutely crazy when I see people at a track meet who are in the way and not paying attention to the track meet. However, this only happens a couple times a meet, and most people are very polite when you ask them to go back into the stands."
Stay on task
"My biggest challenge has been trying to stay on task while a million people are asking for their times and other various questions that it seems everyone asks at every meet and so few people know the answer," said Rogers. "When you enter results in the book its important that you don’t get distracted or else you may forget to enter something or you may get behind so you won't be able to calculate the score quickly after the meet has finished.
"Chelsea seems to value my guidance and double checks everything that she doubts with me," said Rogers. "So I think she appreciates that I am there and uses me as a valuable resource for her questions. She often says she doesn't know what she would do without me, but I know that she will be fine. She is good at her job."
"Really, I was hoping that the administrators would find some way to keep her (Ellen) from graduating, but they didn’t think that was such a good idea," said White. "So she graduated and I spent the first part of the year talking with the freshman teachers about the kind of student I was looking for to see if that type of student showed up anywhere. Luckily, I had the opportunity to split a physical science class, and got a group of 15 freshman which is where I found Chelsea."
"For a weekday meet we spend an hour or two setting up and an hour or so after the meet cleaning up," said White. "For a big meet like the Golden Corner meet, it takes four to five hours to type in the names and entries (we’re too cheap to use Direct Athletics so far!), and then seed the races. Then a few hours in the afternoon or morning setting up and organizing everything. Maybe a day and a half total to do everything and run off the meet. My wife will be the first to tell you that I spend too much time here on meet days, and it’s hard not to be at home with two little kids, but I think we do a good job and I think other teams and athletes like to come here. We’re always looking for ways to get more efficient and better at what we do, and I think we have made some significant improvements over the past few years to where things really run well. I’m always trying to pay attention when we go places like Spring Valley to see what they do differently from us and how we can improve, so we’re constantly trying to change things for the better."
Rogers, ending her career as a manager one day, mentioned, "Probably not for years to come, sometime I will have to close this wonderful chapter of my life. One day I would like to be a normal spectator and watch my little brother pole vault."
And Seneca track and field managers have learned what it takes to help with the process.
"Whenever we have a manager graduate, coach (Tom) Jordan and I always look for a freshman who fits the mold of being what we need in a manager," said coach Chris White. "At the time I was teaching a physical science class, and Ellen (Rogers) was in my class. That’s how I found the manager before Ellen too. In class you get to see the qualities that will help make a good manager. I generally look for the hard worker who is smart and will be dedicated to the team if we ask them to help. Ellen has been the epitome of dedicated, and did a great job for us over her four years here."
"I had coach White as my ninth grade Physical Science teacher and he just asked me one day if I wanted to help out at track with the scoring, specifically the scorebooks," said Rogers. "He also wanted me to handle the physicals and take attendance for all the track members on both the boys and girls teams."
Angie Littlejohn, a 2002 graduate of Seneca, was the manager before (Ellen), who started in 2003. Littlejohn is graduating from University of Virginia this year, according to White.
"She (Ellen) had all the traits I had been looking for in a new manager," said White. "Ellen started as manager in January 2003 at first practice for the Bobcats."
White, starting teaching in 1998, is in his ninth year of coaching and meet management. "Coach Jordan has been coaching and running off meets since well before I was born, so a lot of what we do has been developed over years and years or practice for him."
Manager to cross country runner
"I generally try not to use athletes in meet management because they have enough to worry about on meet day," said White. "I look for students who want to get involved with athletics, but don’t necessarily want to run for whatever reason. Now, by getting involved with track I think that lead to Ellen running cross country, which she will tell you probably never crossed her mind before helping with track. It was hard for her, but she always improved and I think she learned a lot about herself through that. I think finding students who are not athletes to help out with meets just involves more kids in a program that I think teaches them a lot. Our manager before Ellen went on to the University of Virginia and worked in their athletic department, although her dad had a lot to do with that as well. Ellen has gotten involved with the track team at Clemson and helps with their meet management. I’m a firm believer that you
don’t necessarily have to be an athlete to be heavily involved in athletics."
Preparation
"Well, I used to spend about six hours for a normal meet, including the actual four hour meet itself," said Rogers. "But now Chelsea (Cansler) is able to do all the preparation and beyond printing roster sheets, I have little preparation to do. At Clemson we usually get there an hour ahead of the meet to print finish line and field score sheets and then about 30 minutes after the meet to clean up and that’s it."
During (Ellen's) freshman year, White mentioned, "I remember one meet early in the year when she was a freshman when she was learning to keep the books and it was a meet against Wren or Daniel or maybe Hanna. When you keep score, you always have mean coaches looking over your shoulder and pointing out all your mistakes. There was a small mistake which changed the winner of the meet, and it devastated Ellen that she had made this mistake. She left crying and I thought we’d have to find another manager."
"After that, she (Ellen) developed the personality that you have to have in that position where she no longer rushed through the get a score done, and she always double checked to make sure it was right," said White. "She also got better at telling coaches (myself included) to stop bugging her so she could do what she was doing."
"Being a valuable person to the entire team obviously helped my self-esteem," said Rogers, who first started as team manager in 2003. "I had to be more outspoken and assertive. I learned that you have to sometimes be firm when people are not standing where they should be or you need a minute to find a specific time. After a few meets Coach Jordan started calling me "mean woman" so I would remember to be "mean" because I was being too nice and not getting my job done. This has helped me immensely in later positions. Specifically helping with Clemson track."
"My biggest challenge has been trying to stay on task while a million people are asking for their times and other various questions that it seems everyone asks at every meet and so few people know the answer," said Rogers. "When you enter results in the book its important that you don’t get distracted or else you may forget to enter something or you may get behind so you won't be able to calculate the score quickly after the meet (has finished)."
College level
"At Clemson I help at the meets with the scoring on the computer and generally help the other scorers and timers with anything necessary to make the meet run smoother. I only used the computer at Seneca for the region meet and the Golden Corner Invitational," said Rogers. "At Seneca now I enter results of every race and field event in the computer and print out a copy for the bookkeepers to copy off of. This way it eliminates score confusion and is faster."
Training on-site
Rogers, teaching as the meet moves on, helped Cansler alittle, she says. "Little to none in the training department, apart from trying to remember what I had trouble with when I first started. I basically taught her how to use the score books and how to score everything. I answer questions and teach her as we go along because sometimes you cannot forsee the unique circumstances at specific meets. Coach White and coach Jordan are her real trainers as they see her everyday and need her to make the team function. I just help where I can."
Rogers, acting as a mentor to Cansler, passed on her knowledge to help scoring operate smoothly. "Ellen’s been great at helping Chelsea learn how to keep score and run things at the finish line," said White. "She helps her do the books, and answers all her questions. Ellen has become very knowledgeable regarding track and field, and has shared all of that knowledge with Chelsea. It’s interesting to see two VERY different personalities work together like they do."
Crowd control major focus
White always working to improve meet atmosphere and operation, believes crowd control is the biggest challenge in organizating a meet. "That is something we are constantly trying to work on, but something is always coming up. Whether it is athletes all around the finish line, or people crossing the track during a race, or whatever might go on in the stands. When you get that many people in the same spot as often as we do, not everyone is always paying attention to what is around them.
"You’d like to think that anyone not competing would just stay in the stands, but it doesn’t happen that way, and we generally use all our manpower to run off the events which doesn’t allow a person to regulate this (crowd control)," said White. "It gets frustrating, and sometimes it holds up the meet when people are in the way. Since I am a control freak, it drives me absolutely crazy when I see people at a track meet who are in the way and not paying attention to the track meet. However, this only happens a couple times a meet, and most people are very polite when you ask them to go back into the stands."
Stay on task
"My biggest challenge has been trying to stay on task while a million people are asking for their times and other various questions that it seems everyone asks at every meet and so few people know the answer," said Rogers. "When you enter results in the book its important that you don’t get distracted or else you may forget to enter something or you may get behind so you won't be able to calculate the score quickly after the meet has finished.
"Chelsea seems to value my guidance and double checks everything that she doubts with me," said Rogers. "So I think she appreciates that I am there and uses me as a valuable resource for her questions. She often says she doesn't know what she would do without me, but I know that she will be fine. She is good at her job."
"Really, I was hoping that the administrators would find some way to keep her (Ellen) from graduating, but they didn’t think that was such a good idea," said White. "So she graduated and I spent the first part of the year talking with the freshman teachers about the kind of student I was looking for to see if that type of student showed up anywhere. Luckily, I had the opportunity to split a physical science class, and got a group of 15 freshman which is where I found Chelsea."
"For a weekday meet we spend an hour or two setting up and an hour or so after the meet cleaning up," said White. "For a big meet like the Golden Corner meet, it takes four to five hours to type in the names and entries (we’re too cheap to use Direct Athletics so far!), and then seed the races. Then a few hours in the afternoon or morning setting up and organizing everything. Maybe a day and a half total to do everything and run off the meet. My wife will be the first to tell you that I spend too much time here on meet days, and it’s hard not to be at home with two little kids, but I think we do a good job and I think other teams and athletes like to come here. We’re always looking for ways to get more efficient and better at what we do, and I think we have made some significant improvements over the past few years to where things really run well. I’m always trying to pay attention when we go places like Spring Valley to see what they do differently from us and how we can improve, so we’re constantly trying to change things for the better."
Rogers, ending her career as a manager one day, mentioned, "Probably not for years to come, sometime I will have to close this wonderful chapter of my life. One day I would like to be a normal spectator and watch my little brother pole vault."