Thursday, December 9, 2010

Back Home from San Antonio

Well, I am back from my advance planning trip to San Antonio, and one thing is for certain.....it will be a GREAT week in San Antonio!!!!!!!

First of all, the Riverwalk is so AWESOME!!!!!!! Fans who do not make this trip will really be missing out on something special. I hope all Pac 12 fans will support this bowl, because our conference is so fortunate to be tied in to this game!!!!! In my 30 plus years of going to bowl games, this bowl is at the top of the BEST for the fans!!!!!!!! The trip will be fun for the team too, but this bowl is for the FANS!!!!! Hopefully the Wildcat fans will support the team and the conference, and travel to this game.

Then, the game is played indoors, so the weather is AWESOME (again, listen up fans). The practice facilities are as good as any bowl team can hope for. The hospitality is great. Plus, being tied in with the Big 12 conference and playing great teams, like the Oklahoma State Cowboys....well, this shapes up to be a GREAT week.

Tim Pfennig and Benny Conger have been working hard on getting bowl stuff ordered and getting it ready for the team. Then, tomorrow, we have our first bowl practice. So a lot is going on in the equipment room right now.

After practice tomorrow night is our team awards banquet at the La Paloma.

Then back to work on Saturday morning for practice #2, but before practice, Tim and I will meet and show equipment to our football recruits that visiting this week. We will finish off the weekend with our third practice on Sunday.

It isn't just the equipment room working hard, but everyone involved with Wildcat Football is very busy right now, and I know in the equipment room, we wouldn't want it any other way!!! I was with Coach Stoops last night and most of the day today, and you talk about a busy man!!! We are so fortunate to have such a great hard working head football coach!!! When we were dropped off at the airport, he was headed to Salt Lake City for recruiting work. Seems like he gets no rest at all.

Oh well, I hope to keep up with the blog during the process so you can get a up close and behind the scenes view of what it takes to get the team to a bowl game.


Julie Baker, of the Alamo Bowl staff, talks with Erick Harper, our Director of Football Operations on the field of the Alamodome. One thing is for sure, NO bad weather for the game against the Cowboys!!!!

Maintenance crews were working in our locker room at the Alamodome while we were there. This is a picture of the long and narrow locker room. There are only 61 lockers, and we will be dressing around 100 players for the game. We will have to decide if we want to double players up (nice big lockers), or put benches down the middle????

This is what our bowl game jersey will look like for the game (no suspense!!). The bowl and the Pac 10 conference are very particular on where patch placement should be on the jerseys. We have some sewing to do!!!!!

Julie Baker of the Alamo Bowl staff, took our advance group to our practice facilities for the week in San Antonio:

Part of the advance group, looking at the AWESOME facilities at the University of The Incarnate Word:

This is actually inside the lobby of our team hotel. Part of the river runs through the lobby of the hotel.

This is the atrium at our team hotel in San Antonio. It is a beautiful hotel, right on the Riverwalk:

This is one of many patio restaurants on the Riverwalk. This one is located near our team hotel, the Hyatt Regency Riverwalk.

This is one of many water taxis that go up and down the river all day and night on the Riverwalk.

This was the media room for the press conference this morning at The Club at Sonterra in San Antonio.

There was quite a bit of coverage at the press conference this morning in San Antonio. Here, some of the TV camera men setting up:

Coach Gundy and Coach Stoops before the presser this morning, talking to some of the media:

Coach Stoops earlier today in San Antonio addressing the media:

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Do those pictures of the press conference mean UofA will be wearing blue helmets? And blue jerseys as well? Or are you guys putting patches on all the jerseys (seems like a lot of extra work, but just asking)?

azwildcatequipment said...

Our plan is to wear white helmets, navy jersey and white pants in the game. The alamo bowl has helmets in stock of each of the big 12 and pac 10 schools that they got from a helmet mfg, and all they had was blue helmet for us. That is why the blue helmet for the presser. Thanks for the question.

azwildcatequipment said...

There is a real good chance that we will wear our blue helmets in the bowl game. As I posted earlier, our PLAN was to wear white, but coach is leaning towards the blue now. Don't ask me why, because when coach tells me something, I do not ask him why.

asanchez said...

Are there any plans to introduce a red helmet any time soon? Also any chance the blue helmet gets a different, maybe more metalic, blue paint job that "pops" a little more?

asanchez said...

Are there any plans to increase the size of the "A" logo on the helmet? When you guys introduced the white helmets last year at the Holiday Bowl the "A" was noticably larger and looked great, any chance that comes back? By the way how often do you guys have the helmets painted?