MORGANTOWN — Locked away in the bowels of the WVU Coliseum lies pieces of Bubba Schmidt’s legacy that was 42 years in the making.
In the storage room is hundreds of West Virginia men’s and women’s basketball jerseys that will never see the light of day again.
“We can’t sell them, because they have the player’s name on the back and by NCAA rules, you can’t really do anything with them,” said Schmidt, West Virginia’s Director of Equipment Operations for the last 42 years, who will retire on May 31. “There are probably some [2010] Final Four jerseys in there. Most of them are a little more recent than that, but they’re all in there just hanging around.”
And that is where Schmidt’s story with WVU begins, at least the way he explains it.
He was splitting time between working on his Master’s in physical education, tending bar downtown and playing pickup games at the WVU Coliseum during lunch.
“I was literally just hanging around and Ed Crawford was the school’s equipment manager then and he asked me if I would be interested in helping him out part-time,” said Schmidt, a Wheeling native who graduated from WVU in 1976 and began working in the equipment room in 1977. “I really didn’t have anything else going on, so why not?”
On the job
What exactly details a college equipment manager?
To those who have just a casual knowledge of the WVU Coliseum, Schmidt is the guy who hangs out in the spacious laundry and storage room in one of the back hallways.
To many fans who sit behind the basket on the visitor’s side, Schmidt is the guy always leaning his right shoulder against the railing watching each men’s basketball game intently, as one long-time fan described him to The Dominion Post photographer William Wotring.
“He’s done that for the last 15 years,” the fan said.
Truth be told, Schmidt’s role as equipment manager for every WVU sport except for football has changed over the years more than the uniforms themselves.
Many of the early days were spent hauling bags of laundry to and from the Shell Building, because the Coliseum wasn’t equipped with its own laundry facilities until 2006. It was not always an easy task during some West Virginia winters.
“Pushing laundry carts in the snow was not a lot of fun,” he said.
On road trips during the Atlantic 10 days, not all of the schools provided laundry facilities.
“So, you’d get to the second game on the road and if the school couldn’t help us, I would try to find a laundromat nearby,” Schmidt said. “Sometimes certain hotels would do it for us. If we couldn’t do any of that, we would just take two sets of uniforms with us.”
And up until West Virginia became a Nike school in 2001, Schmidt sat down with all his coaches to help design uniforms before being in charge of ordering them, triple-checking each time that every size was right for every athlete.
“Nike will send you the line art, and for the most part, that’s what you’re getting,” he said. “You can make subtle changes. With the old uniforms, we had more say.”
So, if you’re not a fan of a particular WVU hoops uniform, “I just tell people to call Nike now,” Schmidt says with a smile.
Staying on top of ordering equipment is more than just game jerseys and shorts. It’s also shoes, warm-up shirts, team sweats, practice shirts and practice jerseys.
“On average, we have about 3,000 boxes delivered here each year,” Schmidt said. “The big trucks back in to our delivery area in the back and sometimes the whole truck is nothing but our stuff.”
When he was first promoted to director in 1980, Schmidt’s staff included one part-time assistant and the equipment room was a back corner office in what is now the Coliseum’s weight room.
“You came in and there were six or seven feet where you could walk by that was all shelves I used,” Schmidt said. “Then, there was also the men’s and women’s locker room and the trainer’s room all in one area.”
His staff now consists of three full-time assistants, two graduate assistants and two student workers, and the office is spacious enough for storage and its own laundry facilities.
While Schmidt travels with the men’s basketball team, he does not travel with every sport. That means staying on top of what each coach and athletes need when their team travels.
“You have to be very organized,” Schmidt said. “I always plan my next week’s schedule on Thursday or Friday of the previous week, so that I know exactly what needs to be done. I know when each team is leaving or when each team plays here. I know what we have to do for visiting teams. Do we have any meetings with coaches? If you’re not organized day-to-day, you’re going to have a lot of problems.”
Stories, sacrifices and one missed game
One of the first things you need to know about Schmidt is his passion for golf.
“He’s about a 5-handicap,” said Schmidt’s best friend Don Schillinger, the head pro at Mountaineer Golf Course. “We’ve played together in some local tournaments over the years. He’s pretty good.”
In 2002, Schmidt and Schillinger landed some tickets to watch the practice round of the Masters and the two decided to make a long golf weekend out of it.
It was just days earlier that West Virginia hired Dan Dakich to replace Gale Catlett as its men’s basketball coach.
“I had actually met with Dakich a couple of times,” Schmidt said. “Nothing big, just discussed a few things that he would need to get going.”
When Schmidt returned on that Friday, he had no idea Dakich had changed his mind and returned to Bowling Green.
“I got a call from Garrett Ford saying I needed to get his stuff out of the basketball office, which was a bunch of bags of shoes and shirts,” Schmidt said. “I asked why. He said, ‘Well, he left and went back to Bowling Green.’ I didn’t know anything about that. That was one of the more interesting stories since I’ve been here.”
Forty-two years of early days, late nights and road trips can take its toll on a family and Schmidt is quick to credit the support he’s received over the years from his wife, Betsey, as well as his three daughters, Kaylee, Anne and Iliana.
In all of those years, Schmidt missed just one men’s basketball game and for good reason, “My oldest daughter was graduating from Lipscomb,” he said. “You only get to see your oldest daughter graduate once.”
The game in question: West Virginia’s 112-67 victory over the University of Missouri-Kansas City, which was Bob Huggins’ 800th career victory.
“I’ll miss the basketball games,” Schmidt said. “I’ll miss the relationships. I’ll miss being at every game. It will be interesting the first time I come to a game just as a fan and go sit in the stands and have a few beers.”
Wrapping it up
In 42 years, Schmidt said his goal was simple: To make the Mountaineers look as good as possible.
“I think our kids look pretty good, which is my main objective,” he said. “It’s about the athletes and I never wanted our athletes to look bad. There’s enough bad jokes out there about the state of West Virginia as it is, so I never wanted to hear someone say we had ratty-ass uniforms or look at how stupid they look.”
Another great fear of an equipment manager is having that equipment fall apart at the worst time. Such was the case earlier this season at Duke, when Zion Williamson’s foot burst through his Nike shoe against North Carolina and injuring his foot in the process.
“I’ve had basketball shoes come apart at the bottom,” Schmidt said. “I’ve never had any of them blow on the side like what happened at Duke. I’ve had the toes come off and I’ve had the heels come off. It’s just the glue and stitching is what it is.
“There was one year where Nike was having a problem with shoes blowing out all over the place. We don’t make them. All we could keep doing was give them another pair and hope that pair is better.”
In his 42 years, coaches came and went. Huggins is the fourth men’s basketball coach — fifth if you count Dakich — that Schmidt worked with.
Many former players often stop and chat, which Schmidt is always appreciative of.
In that equipment room, Schmidt was always a constant in the Coliseum.
“To stay for 42 years, that’s pretty rare,” Schmidt said. “I’ve got to know some guys across the country who have been at their school for 15 or 20 years, but 42 years, that’s pretty rare.”
And after 42 years of handing out jerseys, WVU handed him one back. The school honored Schmidt late in the regular season with his own framed jersey.
“That meant so much to me,” he said. “They didn’t have to do that, but it meant a lot to me and my family.”
It will be added to his memorabilia collection that includes a case “of about 50 rings in a case,” that stem from past trips to the NCAA tournaments, as well as Atlantic 10 and Big East championships.
He wears his 2010 Final Four ring. He also kept the game ball from the last men’s home basketball game he worked — the 109-91 loss against Coastal Carolina in the CBI.
WVU has yet to name his replacement and Schmidt said he felt it was best to stay out of it. When he leaves in May, Schmidt wants to make a clean break.
His future plans will include working with Schillinger at Mountaineer Golf Course. He may get back into tending bar.
“I’ve been asked to consult by a few places. I’ve been asked to go tend bar during the day,” he said. “If I get tired of doing those things, I guess I will go do what other retired people do and go stock shelves somewhere. I’ve gotten pretty good at that.”
