Look who’s taLking

Mike bissaillon, Athletic Equipment Manager

What’s a typical day on the job?

Doing the laundry for the next day and organizing uniforms and travel bags. Monday is the busiest day for laundry because of all the contests over the weekend. In three buildings we do 40 loads of laundry. In addition to the kids’ clothes, we wash staff shirts and sheets for the massage therapists.

Does anyone sneak in extra laundry?

Yeah. If you put blue jeans in your laundry, you get suspended from the service for a week. I don’t know any sport that needs blue jeans.

Do you have any special tricks for tough stains?

There are four chemicals programmed into the computer and they automatically feed into the system: an enzyme to eat away stains and odors, a detergent, a softener and a non-chlorinated bleach. With the new turf fields there are a lot of black rubber stains, especially on the baseball uniforms. Stains like that require some more attention. For example, there are individual chemicals we use to get rid of clay, grass and the glue used to place numbers on track uniforms, which leaves a residue. Some stains require multiple wash cycles.

What’s your favorite part of the job?

Traveling with the teams. My first 10 years I traveled with the football team, driving a van behind the bus with all their equipment, and now I travel with women’s hockey. It’s a different way of getting to know players and coaches than just seeing them across the counter.

What’s your least favorite part of the job?

The budgetary stuff. The price of equipment is rising so fast.

Players sometimes forget their gear on the road, don’t they?

Always expect the unexpected. A few years ago we had to overnight a basketball uniform to Alaska for a tournament. The kid left it in his locker. Last season the men’s hockey starting goalie forgot his uniform and they were at Cornell. The game was at 11 a.m. Someone drove it all the way up there.

“We’re the ones who order all the uniforms and equipment.”

BRIGHT IDEAS 23 x 16 Size, in feet, of the new hi-def video scoreboard at Memorial Field. It’s a gift from the family of Stephen Lewinstein ’63.