How Notre Dame football makes a visiting locker room its home: Inside the equipment truck

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Notre Dame equipment truck backs down Lamar Jackson Way at 9 a.m. Friday morning, trying to thread the tunnel of Gate 8 at L&N Stadium. It’s a conspicuous parking job in style and scene, a semi-trailer adorned with Notre Dame football logos reversing itself into Louisville’s home field while a few dozen Cardinals players pass by, heading to team meetings.

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That’s how this five-hour choreography of cleats begins for Notre Dame’s equipment staff. By 2 p.m., locker rooms are transformed into a temporary home base for Marcus Freeman’s program, a process overwhelming in detail. It looks easy for head football equipment manager Chris Bacsik only because he’s spent more than 20 years mastering the thousands of steps required to take Notre Dame football on the road.

Bacsik — pronounced BASS-ick, but it’s just “Bass” to anyone who knows him — became Notre Dame’s head equipment manager six seasons ago. Before that, he was a volunteer assistant setting up away locker rooms, at one point flying to games at his own expense. Before that, he painted helmets on Friday nights and helped set up the home locker room while working on a graduate degree at Notre Dame. And before that, he was head student manager, a lifelong Irish fan who counted basketball players Martin Ingelsby and Harold Swanagan as freshman roommates.

“Having been to nearly all these places now, you’ve got a pretty good recollection of how it works,” Bacsik said. “The stuff that you can’t control is what keeps me up at night.”

Bacsik is so comfortable with the job he doesn’t mind putting The Athletic to work on a Friday morning. What better way to learn what it takes to relocate the Notre Dame football program than to be part of that process?

That I accidentally put kicker Zac Yoakam’s jersey in the locker of defensive tackle Aidan Keanaaina — they’re five inches and 121 pounds apart, but both wear No. 92 — is simply a professional hazard. I catch my mistake two minutes later when holding up Keanaaina’s jersey in front of Yoakam’s locker and wondering why the backup kicker would dress in a blanket.

Turns out there are checks for all this Bacsik has committed to memory. To be part of the locker room set-up offers an appreciation of just how much goes into this college football road show, preparing for what could happen the next night and protecting against what can’t. To say Notre Dame’s equipment team has thought of everything undersells just how much foresight has been applied to this process.

Before any of the equipment is wheeled off the truck, Bacsik applies nameplate stickers to all 79 player lockers and the 11 full-time coach lockers in a separate room. The players are broken up by position groups. Running backs are closest to the coaches. Receivers are closest to the showers. And safeties are closest to the exit Notre Dame will take to hit the field.

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The shoulder pads get wheeled in first, three dollies of clasps, straps, padding, plastic and two-sided tape. The pads have players’ names tucked under the top shoulder pad plus their number, but it’s not always their jersey. Back home in the Guglielmino Athletics Complex, there are locker numbers that help avoid the confusion of players with the same jersey number getting the wrong pads, pants, shirts or underwear.

For example, Audric Estime is 122, but Jaden Mickey is still 7. Jadarian Price is 110, but Jack Kiser is still 24. Bacsik has the variant numbers committed to memory, as do the student managers who staff the locker room back home. Fourteen managers travel to road games.

Bacsik, myself, volunteer assistant Sean Kearns and communications assistant Claire Kramer start putting shoulder pads on lockers. Some pads have strips of two-sided blue tape on all sides. Offensive linemen started using the tape a few years ago to make their jerseys tighter to their bodies. Defensive linemen followed. Same with receivers and a few running backs and linebackers.

The add-on creates mind-numbing work, pulling the blue outer layer of the tape to expose the adhesive strip underneath. Not every player has the tape, but the more than 30 who can sometimes have eight strips each.

“That’s the most tedious part,” Bacsik said. “You’re saving us time.”

It’s not clear if Sam Hartman prefers the adhesive tape on his pads because all his gear hasn’t arrived yet. Quarterbacks and long-snappers wear pads during Thursday’s practice, so their pads arrive on the team plane a day later.

Four helmet trunks wheel into the locker room next. Bacsik unlocks each, then turns the face masks toward the back of the trunk to signal players who didn’t travel to Louisville. He doesn’t need to double check a list. I start grabbing facemasks and putting helmets on the top shelf of the locker room: Kiser, Hartman, Joe Alt, Gabe Rubio. The helmets are customized to each player. Many have the name and autograph stitched into the back of the interior padding.

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Estime, Howard Cross and Billy Schrauth don’t have helmets in any of the trunks. Theirs were damaged the previous week at Duke, got repainted by the manufacturer midweek and didn’t get back to Notre Dame until Thursday, after the truck had already left campus. Their helmets will be with Hartman’s pads on the team plane, delivered by assistant equipment manager Tim Roberts.

Like setting a table, there’s a method to how every piece is positioned. The helmets aren’t just placed on the top shelf of the locker; they’re turned to face the door the players will exit to take the field. After jerseys are placed over pads, they’re oriented the same way.

Next come player loops, which is what they wear beneath their uniforms: long-sleeve T-shirts, shorts, underwear, etc. Each loop has the player’s locker number on its top. Green bags come next, a mesh container that holds mouth guards, wrist bands, arm sleeves and the customized uniform modification players want. Gloves go into lockers next, each set a single-use pair for games. Players will get another set back home for practice. They’re disposable before players get their next game set.

Jerseys and pants come next, jerseys tossed on the locker stools and the pants hung up. The jerseys have stickers on the inside of the collar with each player’s locker number, meaning there shouldn’t be any confusion about duplicate numbers like 8, 24, 27 or 92. If you know where to look.

The cleat trunk is opened last and Bacsik starts handing them out to place at the foot of the lockers. Some players have duplicate pairs of cleats. Cam Hart has three in three colors: white, blue and black. He chooses black for the game.

“It’s personal preference,” Bacsik said. “But it’s sometimes for weather, too.”

Bacsik and Kearns start to put jerseys over shoulder pads, fighting with the double-sided tape the entire time. Kearns compliments himself for getting Alt’s jersey over his pads in one motion. Bacsik says Kearns, head manager during Brian Kelly’s first season and now living in Washington, D.C., must be performing for an audience. Now he’s the new Bacsik, volunteering on the road.

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“Just better looking,” Kearns said.

“But not as hard-working,” Bacsik laughs.

“You can’t have it all,” Kearns shoots back.

The finishing move of locker room set-up is the space devoted to Marcus Freeman.

In the coaches’ locker room, the 10 full-time assistants already have their gear set out, hat preferences checked and sizes correct. Freeman has his own trunk that feels more like a master bedroom closet on wheels when opened. More than a dozen hat choices and more than two dozen outfit components depending on the mood. If Freeman wants to squeeze in a gameday workout, Bacsik packs for that. There’s a steamer and ironing board, if necessary.

“I think he gets an alert on his watch anytime I open this,” Bacsik said. “I way overpack for him. He’s got everything you could possibly want.”

Bacsik hangs a couple of long sleeve crewnecks in Freeman’s locker, plus a white dry-fit T-shirt and dark blue hoodie with script “Irish” on the front. Freeman opts for gray pants and a dark blue vest over one of those crewnecks for the game.

The coaches’ locker room comes with its own snack bar, a Keurig machine, assorted gum, mints and enough candy to power a house of six through Halloween. Airheads, Twix, Reese’s, Starbursts, Skittles, KitKats, even Blow Pops — the Irish coaching staff has a convenience store at the ready, if they want it. The only concern from the equipment staff is the coaches’ locker room has just one power outlet.

But the jewel of the coaches’ space is tucked into the lower corner of Freeman’s crate. That’s where the traveling Play Like A Champion Today sign is stored. Bacsik will hang it in the hallway leading to the field on Saturday afternoon. That creates the potential for leaving a souvenir behind, of course, in the madness of postgame scenes no matter the result.

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And that did happen once when Notre Dame played at MetLife outside New York. Bacsik called the stadium immediately and the traveling PLACT sign was back in South Bend 48 hours later.

“I’ll always get back on the bus and sit down, then you’re thinking, ‘Did I pack the sign?’” Bacsik said.

At which point it’s too late to check, of course. The sign is a coda to the locker room scene, hard to miss when taking the field but easy to overlook when you’re heading home after a football game. Especially like the one Notre Dame is about to play.

Eight hours earlier, Notre Dame’s managers meticulously arranged the sideline just like Bacsik set up the locker room a day earlier. There are sideline trunks for helmets and cleats. There are eight heaters and eight Gatorade coolers, plus one very large tub. The injury tent, exercise bike, headsets — it’s all set out to Notre Dame’s specifications. Operations staff set up the headsets at midfield, then turn them to the right frequency.

But as Louisville fans crowd the wall in the final minute of Notre Dame’s 33-20 loss, chaos will soon reign. The backup jersey and extra football bins are wheeled toward the tunnel with a minute to play. The remaining trunks are locked. The field storm begins.

“I tell our group safety first and stay together,” Bacsik said. “Do what you can, be safe, and if we have to come back and get something, we will. As long as the small stuff is off the field, everybody stays by the trunks and the headsets, and then cleans up within reason when they can.”

Notre Dame wants the equipment truck ready to roll out less than an hour after the game ends.

Considering the mass of humanity on the L&N Stadium field turf at 11:06 p.m., that might be a challenge. But the hivemind of Notre Dame’s equipment team delivers. Male managers pull trunks out of the locker room. Female managers roll them toward the semi’s open gate. The drivers then reconstruct the Jenga tower of equipment, clothing and gear in the trailer. Removed from the madness of the field, the puzzle comes together quickly.

This is the first season of Notre Dame’s new equipment trailer, which has solar power lights and speakers. The equipment staff may work in the background, but they don’t need to work in darkness or silence. The new trailer also doesn’t have holes in the floor, a reality of a 20-year-old vehicle.

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By 11:30 p.m., the semi is half full, which includes some of the items that never came off, like cold weather and rain gear. By 11:50, the student managers are called to the team buses and they scurry up the stadium stairs to board. The last pair of shoulder pads is wheeled into the trailer one minute later. The drivers use support bars and ratchet straps to lock everything else down.

Roberts helps the drivers close the back doors of the trailer and lock them up. The truck will be back in South Bend by morning, to be unpacked around noon before Notre Dame can start planning for the next road trip, when the Irish head to Clemson on Nov. 4.

Roberts shakes hands with the drivers before the semi pulls out from Gate 8.

“Safe drive,” Roberts says. “See you in about a month.”

Saturday night didn’t go to plan for Notre Dame football, but its equipment operation was prepared for everything.

(Top photos: Pete Sampson / The Athletic)

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