B.U. Bridge is published by the Boston University Office of University Relations.

Contact Us

Staff

Scott and staff equip Terrier teams for all seasons

By Hope Green

Tiger Woods wears a red shirt on the golf course on the final day of a match. Michael Jordan regularly hid his University of North Carolina basketball shorts under his Bulls uniform.

When it comes to clothing, BU athletes can be as superstitious as the pros. Old socks are a favorite talisman, and one field hockey player swears by her lucky purple sports bra.

James Scott is a familiar figure in the equipment room, where athletes pick up gear and drop off laundry. Photo by Vernon Doucette

No one is more familiar with such fetishes than James Scott, general manager of Terrier athletic equipment. Scott has been humoring students’ odd requests at his service window in the Walter Brown Arena for 27 years.

"There are people who have to have everything a certain way," Scott says, chuckling sympathetically. "They’ll say, ‘Last time I wore this I scored a goal,’ and they’ll stand there with tears in their eyes if I say no."

Scott and his three-man staff are among the Terriers’ biggest fans. All played sports in their youth, and now and again they’ll take in a home game, even after a day of sharpening skates, mending tennis nets, or washing half a ton of sweat-soaked, mud-encrusted, cola-stained uniforms.

Mirth is never in short supply in the stockroom. Scott shakes with laughter as he recounts the time a young woman brought her lingerie to be washed along with her team apparel. He obliged. "The next day she brings in another bag and I say, ‘What’s this?’ and she says, ‘It’s my roommate’s. Can you do hers, too?’"

From a small back office, Scott supervises his crew and runs interference between coaches and sporting-goods suppliers. "Every sport is run out of here. See all those orders?" he says, pointing to a stack of filing trays with neatly sorted slips of paper. "All the equipment is run through here. The sugar-free cookies are for me," he quickly adds with a grin, referring to an opened package atop the pile of forms.

Scott came to Boston University in 1973 after two decades in the Navy, including 15 years at sea aboard destroyers. In the 1950s, with the Cold War at full tilt, he joined a top-secret mission to Antarctica and helped set up a device that intercepted Soviet radio signals. Later he served in Vietnam. At one point he did a two-year stint in Special Services, managing sports and recreation equipment at the Quonsett Point Naval Air Station in Rhode Island.

"That room was eight times the size of this one," Scott says, "so this seemed small when I came here."

Much has changed on Babcock Street since Scott got started at BU working the 3-to-11 laundry shift. Coaches have come and gone. Athletic fields have been improved. Football was eliminated. And in the past decade, what had once been club sports for women, such as soccer, lacrosse, and golf, were upgraded to varsity programs.

But Scott believes the most dramatic evolution has been in the quality of the players. Athletes, especially the women, are starting freshman year faster and stronger than their counterparts a generation ago. "Before, they’d come in and take a year or two to develop. Well, now they come in and they’re ready, in just about every sport."

Scott speaks proudly of his staff: Robert Monahan, his aide on the day shift, whom Scott calls "my right-hand man," Michael DiMella, who makes sure the teams get the right hockey equipment ("He does the wheeling and I do the dealing," Scott jokes), and Robert Rehfield, who handles the bulk of the laundry at night. "We call him young Bobby," Scott says. "He’s the baby. He’s 55.

"All the coaches are happy with us as far as I can see," Scott says. "Occasionally they lose, and then they don’t know who to blame but the guy in the equipment room! But we’ve never had a game delayed because the equipment wasn’t ready. Lots of people think this is a trashy job, but these guys enjoy what they do and they’re very good at it. I couldn’t be happier with them."

7 December 2000
Boston University
Office of University Relations