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| Courtesy of Matt Mitchum Manager Matt Mitchum and fellow basketball players cheer on their teammates at one of the Marlins’ home games. |
Walking through the Grille, he wears his basketball team fleece jacket. On away games he sits on the bus, headphones on, drumming a beat on the armrest of his seat. After the game, he calls his mom from his cell phone to tell her how it went. He leads the Marlin basketball team in the team prayer before games, and he's in the huddle during timeouts. Sounds like your average Marlin basketball player. The difference? Instead of a Marlin jersey come game day, he's - more often than not - wearing his lucky blue whale tie. Wesleyan junior Matt Mitchum spent the past season as the men's basketball team manager - an opportunity that presented itself in a rather unusual fashion. Last summer, he was working in the Batten Center fitness room when head basketball coach Dave Macedo came in and was preparing to hop on one of the stationary bikes. "Matt was behind the counter and asked me for an ID," said Macedo. "I kind of chuckled, and said, 'no, I work here.' He said, 'well, you need an ID to work out.'" The next day, Macedo returned with an ID.
Thereafter, the two would small-talk about sports, usually with Macedo razzing him about his choice of loyalties (Florida State for college football, Atlanta Braves for baseball, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. for NASCAR), and the two debating the merits of the Washington Redskins vs. the New England Patriots. "One thing I can't stand," joked Macedo. "He's a Redskins fan." "Monday was our big sports day, because I'd hound him if the Patriots lost," Mitchum said. "But if the Redskins lost, he'd come looking for me." Macedo then learned that Mitchum would often attend the men's basketball games and they frequently spoke about the team. "I went to a lot of the games, and I'd let him know what I saw," said Mitchum. "All it came down to was him just asking me." One day, Macedo dropped the offer.
"I said to him, 'We're gonna need a manager this year,' and he said, 'Give me a week,' and went to check his schedule. He came back the next day." "He's a straight-up kind of person," Mitchum said. "He just kind of asked, 'you in or you out?" Mitchum was in. On game days, he was responsible for the black bag containing clipboards and other essentials for game day, helped assistant coach Jeremey Marks with the laundry ("an interesting experience"), filmed some away games, helped rebound in the opening shoot-around, and led the team prayers in the locker room. Among his responsibilities during practices were running the clock, keeping track of practice time, and filling the duties of what he refers to as the "H20 distribution engineer." While it took him a little while to learn the ropes, he got the hang of it relatively quickly.
"They were really understanding the first few days while I was learning the clock," he said. "During the early captains' practices, Dave Doino was really patient with me." Mitchum, a 2001 graduate of Princess Anne High School in Virginia Beach, is a religious studies major, and is planning to attend seminary upon graduation to obtain his Master of Divinity. "My ultimate goal is to plant churches," said Mitchum. "To get my doctorate in church planting, and build one from the ground up."
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| Courtesy of Matt Mitchum As manager, Mitchum learned how different it was to be part of the team on the bench as opposed to watching from the stands. |
Mitchum has had some experience in the field, as he used to go on missions trips with church groups, which is where the interest grew. "I've always been real interested in studying the Bible," he said. The coaches even cite his presence as key in keeping boiling points in check during the season. "Matty's in the thick and thin of things," said Macedo. "Sometimes the language isn't what it's cracked up to be, but he's in there." "He's so different from all of us [coaches]," said Marks. "He kept us loose, kept Coach loose." "His effect was definitely on the coaches," agreed Macedo. "He kept us loose, kept us relaxed. He was there for the players in a supporting role." "I'm the morale person in the group," said Mitchum. "When we played Salisbury, we didn't play that well but we won at the buzzer. When we had those games, I would be kind of the calming influence on Macedo. He did a good job this year not adding to the panic mode and letting them figure it out themselves. He has a vein in the top of his head, and when he gets mad, it pops out. I didn't see the vein much this year."
And, as he helped with the control, he learned a lot about coaching itself. "I came to a better understanding of why a coach does certain things in a game," he said. "Being in the stands and being on the bench are very different things." And, from the bench, Mitchum was, as Macedo put it, "a big part of a special season." "The Hampden-Sydney game, when we won in overtime," Mitchum remembered. "Being on the bench for that was a totally different experience - to be on the bench and see them win. And in the CNU game when Marcus Fitch hit a layup at the buzzer … on the tape, after the buzzer, I was jumping up and down." "He learned a lot, he did anything we'd ask of him - he became part of a team," said Marks. "He's a great listener. But he'll give it back, too." And sometimes in spades. "During ODACs we went to Golden Corral, and there was this funny little man who sang happy birthday," said Mitchum. "I thought it would be funny to tell them it was Macedo's birthday but it didn't really work because the next day we went back and the guy sang happy birthday to me."
"He's loyal," said Macedo. "He'll sit and watch film with us 'till midnight. He likes learning." Mitchum even acknowledges the possibility of perhaps one day coaching in a church league, but he also recognizes the parallels between the two fields. "The way I see it, a minister is kind of a coach, too - they're teaching something they know a lot about to people who don't know as much about it. With an athletic coach, they're trying to get their athletes to play well; with a minister, they're trying to get people to be saved and to come to a better understanding of God."
"It's definitely an experience I won't forget," Mitchum said of the season. "Being around the coaches was a very good experience. They're very good people, and I found out that I have a lot in common with people I haven't met before, and I got a chance to know a lot of guys I wouldn't have gotten to know." A group in which he ultimately became one of those guys. "At the end of practices we'd do pressure free throws and a couple of times they made me get out there and take one. I guess they were pretty lenient because I never made one." But there's always next year.
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