Just a piece of what goes on behind the scenes in the APU Athletic Department
There are a lot of different components in regards to fully preparing for a sports game. The APU Athletic department reveals all of the aspects that they have to work on to get the players fully prepared and ready for all of the sports games.
April Hoy, Associate Athletic Director and Director of Sports Medicine and Wellness, explained the medical aspect of preparing for a game, which is mainly through the guideline provided by their conference and preparing everything early.
“It can be as basic as most of our conference opponents we have a guideline of what we provide for every game; we have a communication list of which athletic trainers on our medical staff covers which game. So the whole conference has that, and we just refer to those as documents, and then medically just every time you have emergency action plan, so those are set well in advance.” Hoy said.
Hoy also emphasized the bigger difference in regards to scheduling that the athletic trainers have to prepare for each different game, especially for football games, where they have to prepare very early on in the process.
“For football, it is as complicated as months in advance,” Hoy said. “We have to do an ambulance contract, and get them scheduled for the games, coordinate with our team positions to be there for the home games and the away games, and then before each game, we have a full agenda of what has to be done athletic training wise.”
Furthermore, Assistant Athletic Director Aaron Bartholomew acknowledged the aspects of scheduling for different games and the differences in uniforms.
“For most sports, the home teams play in the lighter uniforms, and the visiting teams play in the darker uniforms, but all sports are different,” Bartholomew said.
However, in sports similar to football, it’s the home team that plays in the darker uniforms.
Bartholomew explained the scheduling for different games, which is every three to four days, depending on the semester.
Joe Reinsch, the Sports Information Director of APU’s Athletic Department, shared the promotion and scheduling for the games.
“About 75 percent of our schedule for every sport are already set by the conference we were in. Most of our sport are in the Pacific West conference, but the PacWest conference does not have football, swimming and diving, and female water polo, so these sports are competing in different conferences,” Reinsch said. “The PacWest is our main conference, but it does not offer every single sport. So 75 percent of the schedule is usually set by the conference, kind of like an agreement of all the schools, and usually about 25 percent of our schedule is set by non-conference coaches based on whether they want to take a road trip or if somebody else wants to come here.”
The uniforms are chosen for the players, and even though everyone has different opinions and suggestions, it ultimately depends on the head coach of the sport to decide what the uniform will be.
Regarding the promotion for the game, Reinsch explained that he has the responsibility within this area to keep people posted about the events and stories happening before, during and after the game. He also shared that the games are always promoted evenly between different social media platforms, and also in different flyers and email notification.