The Changing Role of the Equipment Manager

By Mike Fox

I have been very fortunate in my 40+ years of being involved in sports.  My father passed along his passion for sports and I was able to pass that along to my sons who grew up on sidelines when they were not participating themselves in sports.

Recently I was able to have this conversation with my youngest son that had been hired as the Equipment Manager for the Reading Rockets.

I asked Chris to tell me what the number 1 job of the equipment manager is. He responded with the answer, To manage equipment. I then asked him to answer again without using the same words in the answer that were in the question. I got a puzzled look. I then said I will give you clues, our number 1 responsibility is the same as the athletic trainer and the head coach.  Now he appeared a little more perplexed when he said that the number 1 responsibility was to win games. I smiled and said that while I do my job, that really isn’t my first responsibility, nor is it theirs.

Our number 1 responsibility is to prevent injury. If I do my job correctly, where I properly fit the athlete with the proper gear I will prevent injury. If the Athletic Trainer, with preventative taping, conditioning, nutrition, and proper recovery they will prevent injury. And with the coach, teaching proper techniques, strategies and enforcing what we do, will prevent injuries.

Slowly I started to get the head nod as I went on.

How often do you hear an athlete say he gave 100%? Without waiting for the answer I then explained how us doing our job helps the athlete achieve that. Let’s say that in a lacrosse game there are 60 shifts and with shifts etc a player will appear in 40 shifts. Now without any problems, if he gave 100% and was in all shifts, he was 100% effective. But say he broke some equipment or was cramping and missed 10 shifts, and he still says he gave 100%, he really only was 75% effective because he missed time on the floor. So he was 100% effective 75% of the time.

Often you hear people address this issue with, if only this guy was there or that guy the outcome could have been different. There is a cost with the athlete missing time, or the game. A number of teams in all sports chart the +/- of each athlete on the team and how effective he is when is in there. That chart gives you the hard cost of what is lost when an athlete misses shifts.

If we take our job responsibility to the next step, and can minimize any downtime, then we are helping them be 100% effective 100% of the time with no extraneous cost to the team, like defender A missing a shift and the person who is his responsibility now scoring.

Our job is more than attaching face masks and counting shorts. It is doing what we can to eliminate any issues the team might have so that they can stay on the floor as long as possible, so they can achieve the 100-100.