North Carolina State University Athletics
A Visit From the NCAA (1/13/09)
1/13/2009 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
Adina Stock is the NC State's Director of Olympic Sports Game Operations and the site coordinator for the NCAA Women's Basketball Raleigh Regional. For ticket information, click here.
RALEIGH, N.C. “Eighty days till tip off of the Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament.” Those were the words spoken many times by representatives from the NCAA when they came to Raleigh last Tuesday and Wednesday for a site visit of NC State and the RBC Center.
While 80 days may seem like a lot of time, for those of us who have been working on the planning of the 2009 NCAA Regional that will be held at the RBC Center in March, the time is flying by quickly. August is when it really hit, when Brandon Yopp, Morgan Rogers, Rob Douglas and I all flew to Indianapolis for a quick two-day NCAA Tournament meeting. That’s when we were given the book that won’t leave our sides until all play is completed, the “Tournament Manual.” This is the book that has all of the answers and all of the requirements the NCAA has for its tournament.
As part of the preparation for hosting the tournament, the NCAA sends two staff members to Raleigh to meet with the local tournament staff, to check on our progress and give us suggestions and ideas for making the regional as successful as possible. The NCAA representatives who met with us were Michelle Perry and Jackie Campbell. They arrived Tuesday morning and, after a short trip to check them into their hotel, we began the first of many meetings.
We spent most of Tuesday conducting site visits at local hotels that will host the teams, the media and the NCAA staff. I joined tournament director Dick Christy, assistant tournament manager/media coordinator Brandon Yopp and Tori Collins from the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau to go over a long list of rules and expectations required of each hotel.
After that Michelle, Jackie, Tori and I went to visit each of the hotels to see the accommodations the teams would be using. We had to look at a room where the players would be sleeping, a suite for the head coach and school representative, and meeting rooms that the teams would use for meals and team meetings. After the hotel visits we took the NCAA and a couple of the other tournament personnel to “The Pit” in downtown Raleigh for some upscale North Carolina barbecue.
Wednesday started bright and early with an 8 a.m. budget/breakfast meeting with assistant tournament manager Diane Moose, Michelle, Jackie and me. In this meeting, we took a look at the proposed budget NC State submitted to the NCAA and we looked at any areas we thought we would have to adjust.
At 9 a.m., Brandon rejoined the group and we all spent an hour going over the media coverage, all of the requirements and areas that Brandon and his staff will have to focus on since the media is a huge part of the tournament. From 10 a.m. until noon, all NC State staff working on the tournament and RBC Center staff joined the group and we had a good checklist to go over with the specific areas that need to be looked at closely according to the NCAA.
After a quick lunch we were on to the last meeting of the day, the walk-through of the facility to go over the space assignments of where everything with the tournament would happen from the entrance of the media to the entrance of the players. When that was done it was time to pack up and get Michelle and Jackie back to the airport for them to get home for a couple of days before they left for their next site visit.
Thursday morning I had a sigh of relief that the site visit was over and we had done a great job. But I was quickly reminded that this was only the beginning...
Adina Stock
Director of Olympic Sports Game Operations
