December 12, 2019

Driving force behind the scenes, Tech managers help get Golden Eagles to their best

A basketball game does not simply just happen. Over the course of countless hours, whether it's on the court, on the road, in the laundry room, in the hotels and so on, there's a lot of things that have to be done. Fortunately, the Tennessee Tech teams have a hard-working group of men and women putting together great efforts to make sure the Golden Eagles are able to put their best foot forward. These managers may not be suiting up, putting points on the scoreboard or creating highlights of their own, but they are certainly playing their part in helping lead the team toward a championship.

Women's basketball managers Reygan Lamb, Sam Cartwright, Dalenna Horton and Blake Ledbetter with Director of Basketball Operations Emily Hatfield (center).

By Thomas Corhern, TTU Sports Information

A basketball game does not simply just happen. Over the course of countless hours, whether it's on the court, on the road, in the laundry room, in the hotels and so on, there's a lot of things that have to be done.

Fortunately, the Tennessee Tech teams have a hard-working group of men and women putting together great efforts to make sure the Golden Eagles are able to put their best foot forward.

These managers may not be suiting up, putting points on the scoreboard or creating highlights of their own, but they are certainly playing their part in helping lead the team toward a championship.

"Our managers are the backbone of our program, and some of the hardest working young people I have been around," said Tech women's basketball head coach Kim Rosamond. "Blake Ledbetter, D.J. Horton, Sam Cartwright and Reygan Lamb are true servant leaders. One of the core values in our program is Team First, and you don't have to look any farther than this group to see that core value lived out every day. The amount of sacrifice behind the scenes they put in is indescribable. They don't get many articles written about them or awards, but within our team and culture, they are heroes."

Tech men's basketball head coach John Pelphrey whole-heartedly agreed. "They're vital, they're critical," he said. "Managers have a great mindset. There's probably no one else in the program that takes on a heavier workload while being a student. I have nothing but respect and admiration for what they do. As a player and a coach, those guys have been vital to my career and development.

"A lot of those guys are still very dear friends. Some of them were in my wedding. It's not something we take lightly in terms of who we allow to come be around our players every single day. They too have to believe in leadership. They have to believe in being selfless, serious about ball, serious about going to school, serious about serving the community of Cookeville."

Pelphrey continued, "What they do has earned them all our respect and admiration because they have such a heavy workload and most of the time it's not the glamorous stuff. That's how you know they have the right DNA, the right character, because they're never going to score a basket, never going to have their name on the scoreboard, but they are just as if not more invested in the well-being of this team and the well-being of this school than anybody else."

Two of the people who can appreciate the managers' efforts most of all are Blake Gray and Emily Hatfield, the directors of basketball operations for the men's and women's teams, respectively.

Gray said: "Like Coach Pelphrey has said, they're the lifeblood of the program. He preaches that there is leadership from the top and there's also leadership from every other position, whether it's players, staff and managers. They do a lot of things that nobody sees and don't get any credit for it. There's no glitz, no glamour, but they're a huge, huge part of what we do here.

"It's not tough to manage these guys at all, because they help me more than I probably help them. I learn from them almost as much as they learn from me. They make life so easy for me, so it really makes it a perfect situation."

In her second year with the program, but first as the team's DOBO, Hatfield sees on a daily basis how important the team's managers are to the program's success.

"Everything behind the scenes is all them," she said. "They work their tails off for our team just to make sure our girls don't have to worry about their laundry, food, snacks in the locker room. They do all the hard work behind the scenes and they are just so awesome at it."

Men's basketball manager Ezra Pinzur, the elder statesman of the group, is a prime example of that. Through his experience, he has been a valuable asset for the Golden Eagle men.

"We do a lot of things that not many people think about," he said. "Our mission is to make the coaches' jobs easier. We make sure the coaches are able to focus on coaching so they can put all of their time and effort into the team and make everything else happen."

The work for a manager is rarely ever finished. From handling laundry duties, practice setup, locker room setup, handling snacks, meals and beverages at home and on the road, getting equipment packed up and loaded for road trips and much more, there's not too many opportunities for downtime.

"If there's anything the girls need, they're on it," Hatfield said. "They do such a great job. Blake's in his third year and Reygan is finishing up her fourth year here, so they've done a great job of teaching and mentoring D.J. and Sam on where they need to be and taking care of their duties."

Even on the day of the game itself, there's a long list of tasks.

"Our day starts about an hour before shootaround, and we'll set everything up," Ledbetter said. "It's basically balls and water bottles. One of us will go get the food for pre-game, then set up pre-game and all that fun stuff. We get to go home for about an hour, then get here two hours before the game to get everything set up. We have to make sure there's halftime snacks for the girls, then be ready for rebounding at the half."

Pinzur added, "We'll have a guy filming, a guy running the clock, have a guy on the court. We'll then have the 'Manager Catering Service' kick into gear to get the pregame and postgame meals set up, so the guys have that as soon as they get out of practice or the game.

"When we set up the lockers for the game, we take a lot of pride into that. We hang up the jerseys and fold everything so it looks really good for the guys when they come back in, setting up their appearance for the game. That's a big part of our day – making sure they look good. We have to make sure we have the chairs to set up for the coaches. You can't ever forget the board – that's the ultimate manager sin, I think."

Has Tech's crew ever left it behind?

"No," Pinzur said with a sigh of relief. "My senior year, we didn't forget it thankfully, but the board got broke during the game, which is actually pretty normal for whatever reason. The DOBO asked to get out the backup board and this was my first trip as the head manager. I sat there thinking, 'backup board?' We didn't have one, but we have had one ever since then. Got to be ready for anything."

To take care of all the things the coaching staff just does not have time to focus on becomes an important task, one the crew of young men and women take to heart.

"It's very important, but it does get looked past by most people," Ledbetter said. "The little things we do make things a lot easier."

With a lot of their job done behind the scenes, there is one time when getting recognized for something that happened isn't necessarily a good thing.

"As a former manager, my thought was that if I got noticed, I did something wrong," Gray said. "If I was invisible, I was doing my job. My goal was to just make practice run smoothly, do things for coaches that they don't have to worry about on a day-to-day basis so they could focus on the bigger picture."

Pinzur continued, "We don't want those moments where there wasn't a basketball, there was a spot on the floor, there wasn't film. The less we get noticed by the coaches or the players the better, because that typically means things are going smoothly. I'm perfectly happy not being noticed. It's awesome when Coach Pel or the other coaches and players point out something in gratitude – that means the world to me, but as for being out in public, I'm happy being behind the scenes making sure that the people everyone else sees are doing their best."

The reasons to take on such a monumental set of tasks are simple, yet not too surprising.

"So my first couple years of college, I was a player on the NAIA level (at Bethel University) and I wasn't very good," Pinzur said. "I was just on the JV team and that wasn't what I wanted to do. When I became an upperclassman, I e-mailed (former Golden Eagle player, DOBO and assistant coach) Frank Davis and he told me to come over, check out a practice. I met the guys, the managers there at the time and I thought this wasn't too bad. You get to be around basketball, you don't have to run or anything. It's good."

Ledbetter added, "Just being a part of something. People join fraternities and other groups just to feel like a part of something, but this doesn't cost money and it feels more like a family than anything else."

The family aspect is pretty obvious, especially when you're traveling with teammates for five to six months out of the year.

"The relationships are the best part," Pinzur said. "When I first became a manager, I was probably a little tentative about it, because I thought people would think less of you because you kind of think it's a job that nobody wants, but that wasn't the case. Everybody treats you with respect. They value what I bring to the program. You said it about being unsung heroes, but in my time here, that really hasn't been the case, because I've always been treated great by the coaches and the players. They're all appreciative of what we do. I've gotten a great chance to get to know those guys. I get to be around basketball every day and I love basketball. I've learned so much."

He continued, "Traveling with the guys is fantastic. It's really cool and I've probably been to 15 states with basketball that I've never been to before. The bus rides and hotels, everybody's just hanging out. It's like you're one of the players, just the responsibilities are a little different. You're basically living with these guys for a big part of the year. You see them every day, you're spending time with them in hotels all over the place. I've probably met some of my best friends while doing this. When you're around these guys so much, you can't help but make friends with them."

Ledbetter joked, "Yeah, I probably would never have been to Morehead, Ky., otherwise. But it's really cool because I have been able to see so many different places. We went to Charleston (S.C.) last year and this year we went to Las Vegas, and those are places I've never been before. This is giving me an opportunity to do stuff that I've never had the opportunity to do before."

For Ledbetter, working with Rosamond and her staff has been a great experience.

"It's been so awesome," he said. "It's helped me grow as a person. It's making me a better person. I've had to become a lot stricter on myself. This has made it where I'm an hour early for a lot of things. I also over-prepare, which is not a bad thing. It's taught me that most of the time I'm going to have more than I need, but that's never a bad thing."

"Since our staff arrived four years ago, culture has been the key to all the growth and improvement we have experienced in a short amount of time," Rosamond said. "Culture is not lived just within the players – you have to believe in and create championship culture in every area of your program. From a manager standpoint, I thought Darius Berry, who spent six seasons with us as an undergrad and graduate manager, set the tone of our culture from a manager standpoint. He graduated last season, but truly set such a great example of what servant leadership looks like on a daily basis.

"Blake and Reygan have done a tremendous job as veteran managers of continuing this mindset. Sam and D.J. joined us this season and have been tremendous additions because they fit who we are and what we believe. I am proud to have this outstanding group represent Tennessee Tech women's basketball. Each one is special in their own way and are loved dearly among our players and staff, and each one will go on to do great things past college because of their work ethic, commitment and unselfish attitude."

Continuity helps so much as it helps the managers adapt to the role and learn how to serve the teams better. Ledbetter learned that lesson through his predecessor and adapted when the need arose.

"This is my first year as the – quote – 'head manager' title, and before that, I was always under Darius, so I knew what I had to do and I had to step up and be able to do it. Was there a learning curve in my first few games? Absolutely – I forgot a couple of things. But since then, I've grown and taken on my responsibility. If I wasn't here, they'd have to train someone else and Emily would have had more managerial stuff to take care of than she should have to."

Pinzur continued, "I think you hit right off the bat in that there is a lot of things that would not run smoothly without managers. Being able to have us and our relationship with the team in knowing what they want and the players' and coaches' willingness to talk to us, it creates good pathways for communication. With the continuity, it just helps us make things run."

In men's basketball's case, with the transition between Steve Payne and John Pelphrey, having managers back with some experience helps so much with a little bit of continuity.

"Ezra Pinzur is crucially vital," Pelphrey said. "He's one of the great hires that we've made. Having him be here to have someone who's from this state, who's from this school, someone who knows what the Ohio Valley Conference looks like, how things operate here – it would have been a deathblow to us not to have him around. We're very happy that he's here and we're all in on him – anything he wants to do in the future, we're all ready to support him."

Gray added, "All of these guys have been huge. Those guys know more about this place than we do. We've been here for seven, eight months now and guys like Ezra, Trey (Treadway), Kade (Brunswick) have been here at least a year, while Ezra's been here for three, going on his fourth. They have helped us a ton with the areas we just don't know about."

With that said. it's also a new experience for the returning crew.

"It's just so different because you get used to what one coach expects," Pinzur said. "You have to learn their clock styles in practice, how much time he expects the managers to put in. I personally have really enjoyed this transition because, in a way, he really asks a lot more of us. If there's player-only times, he has us run it a little bit. He expects us to know enough about basketball to help guys through drills.

"It is different because we are learning what he expects of us, what he expects from me, how can I make his job easier. For one coach, it might be about a set of skills you bring to the table. For these guys, it's about what are you doing every day to make the players' lives a little better and how are you doing that. I appreciate that. I think that's a great role for us to have."

Pinzur, once his collegiate days are done, sees this as a stepping stone.

"It is a means to an end," he said. "This is a chance for me to make those connections, meet people, learn the game. As a career, I'd love to work in sports and this is a great step toward that."

There is so much that has to happen to make a single basketball game work, and it can't all be managed by the head coach and their staff. They have to find the right people for those tasks, and that's certainly not easy because their performance can help make or break a team.

"At the end of the day, you're looking for people you can trust," Pelphrey said. "You look for guys that you can ask them to get it done today, then they look at you and say, 'Coach, we've already done that.' That's when you know you're on the same page when they say that all the time."